


Hurricane and the Thieves

by redhandsredribbons



Series: Old Gods [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, Canon Queer Character of Color, Crows, Darkspawn, Dragons, Elves, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Families of Choice, Fantastic Racism, Forgiveness, Gen, Government Conspiracy, Grey Wardens, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Heroine's Journey, Historical Trauma, Hubris, Hurt/Comfort, Intersections of Oppression, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Mage Origin, Mistakes and Consequences, Multi, Nightmares, Political Alliances, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Queer Female Warden of Color, Qunari, The Fade, Threesome, Wordcount: Over 50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:03:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 55,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1523837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redhandsredribbons/pseuds/redhandsredribbons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zevran seeks to eliminate the Crows once and for all, Nathaniel clings to redeeming his family's dying name, and Mukarukan, Warden-Commander, wants to save all who suffer. None of their paths will be so simple. The three learn how to fit together as they confront old legacies of trauma, their fears, and their flaws. But when the stigma of her darkspawn alliance shatters everything Mukarukan has worked for, and an ancient conspiracy rears its head to threaten all of Thedas, Mukarukan and those closest to her are faced with choices they never thought they'd make. </p><p>A tale told in waking and in dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the 2014 [_Dragon Age_ Big Bang Challenge](http://dragonagebb.tumblr.com), and illustrated by the phenomenal [covenmouse](http://covenmouse.tumblr.com/post/86018257634/hurricane-and-the-thieves-by-quequieresmrmorden). This fic can easily be a standalone work, but can also be read as the first story of a planned four part series, Old Gods. If by the end you want more, there will be three other fics on the way.
> 
> The **WARNINGS** for this fic are canon-typical, i.e. they arise because I'm dealing with themes the canon DA universe discusses. My fic also has explicit consensual sex. If you're comfortable with all of this, feel free to skip the next paragraph.
> 
> For those who want/need **MORE COMPREHENSIVE WARNINGS** , here's the list: explicit sexual content (all scenes of this are overtly consensual), past child abuse, implied possible past sexual violence (not shown), sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, classism, violence, hanging, past character death, minor character death, major character _near_ death experiences (no major character death), war, some body horror, references to alcohol and alcoholism, racism (both fantastic, i.e. oppression of elves, and actual), colonization, self-harm, depression, dissociation, panic attacks, internalized oppressions, references to suicidal thoughts (no suicide), swearing, past slavery, references to survival sex work, references to bodily functions (in the context of healer work), health crises, poison, emetophobia warning, nightmares, tattooing/needles, demonic possession, blood, claustrophobia, trypophobia in a few dream descriptions. 
> 
> No _Inquisition_ spoilers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>   
> [Cover art](http://covenmouse.tumblr.com/post/86018257634/hurricane-and-the-thieves-by-quequieresmrmorden/) by [covenmouse](http://covenmouse.tumblr.com/)  
> 

_True tests never end._

***

When Nathaniel Howe is six years old, he covets a doll that Delilah has, though the Maker—the Revered Mother, Father, and Mother say—despises covetousness. They instruct him to read, and re-read, and say aloud, the Chant of Light, Transfigurations chapter one, verse five.

_All things in this world are finite._  
 _What one man gains, another has lost._  
 _Those who steal from their brothers and sisters_  
 _Do harm to their livelihood and to their peace of mind._  
 _Our Maker sees this with a heavy heart._

(Nathaniel wonders why the Maker allowed Andraste to be killed, then. For wouldn't a generous Maker let the world keep her, not claim her for Himself?)

(But the last time Nathaniel asked that to Sister Florentine, she insisted he spoke sacrilege. Was he to turn to paganism, like thieving knife-ears?)

Delilah has many dolls. Her coverlet is littered with them in the daylight hours. This doll, however, Nathaniel prefers. Nathaniel is not yet of age, true, he'll admit at six years old, yet he still feels he has discerning tastes when it comes to possessions, unlike Mother. The other dolls are gaudy and frilled, with preternaturally wide, deadened blue eyes, and pale ringlet hair that shimmers. He likes this one, he wants this one, because it's plain and well-crafted, with sturdy stitches in boiled wool and broadcloth, and its hair is black like his.

Nathaniel steals the doll from his hapless baby sister, and Father doesn't say a word. 

Nathaniel and the doll gather stiff, spindled weeds for food, an invisible Tevinter mutt their companion. Father still says nothing aloud.

Nathaniel is six years old, and his father is infinite. So it cannot be his father's fault that Nathaniel's throat feels sour, like when he stole distilled heatherum and sipped to taste it. As Father watches him play, Nathaniel feels tears spring to his eyes, and he doesn't want to be near the doll any longer. A decision of his own accord, though he is not quite yet of age, at six years old.

 

"It's ruined!" Delilah cries when she finds the pieces. She smacks Nathaniel with the disjointed arms and left foot.

In revenge, she buries Nathaniel's knife in the black grit of courtyard dirt. Nathaniel can't find it because Delilah is better at hiding games. Thomas doesn't know where she put it because he's still a baby and doesn't like to talk. The servants don't know, either, and Nathaniel has not yet developed the confidence to demand answers from them like Father does. 

But Delilah digs it back up for Nathaniel when he weeps to her that it will be rusty by the time he finds it. Delilah always weeps as others weep. She gives him his knife and smiles at him. Nathaniel smiles back. All is forgiven.

 

His mother laughs. 

Nathaniel hates the sound of her ugly laugh. 

"Rendon," Mother says, "your son the crybaby has snot on his face again. Do something about him."

Father claps him on the cheek with a hand. Nathaniel blinks and tries to stand with better posture. If he slouches, his mother will instruct him to march like a soldier in front of her on the scuffed carpeting and stone, until his weakness and spine strengthen. And he doesn't like being a soldier. He wants to be the Teyrn of the Blackmarsh instead. Or maybe of Orlais, and he'd make them pay in the ways Father talks about.

To him, Father says, "Chin up, Nathaniel. You're a Howe man. You're brave, aren't you?" 

To Mother, Father says, "He stopped acting the weakling girl for once and gave that piece of rubbish doll a good seeing to, thank Maker."

When Nathaniel Howe is six years old, he nods, flushed with renewed pride and the remnants of now-forgotten tears. He knows there could be no better father in Thedas. A hero, who thinks Nathaniel is brave.

***

Asha'ama always tells him, “Zevran, your _mamá_ was a Dalish whore like me, but I am not your _mamá_.”

“Okay, _mamá_ ,” Zevran says, laughing. He ducks as she throws the soap bucket's floor rag at him and misses. 

He is a small boy, even for a young elf, so he makes a tricky target, trickier than some of the other boys with more meat on their bones who like hitting things with wooden planks for fun. Zevran laughs until his stomach hurts more from the muscles than the emptiness in it. It is true that Asha isn't his _mamá_ , but his _mamá_ left him, so he doesn't want the real one.

Nehn opens the door and sends in a sweep of outside air. The gust is humid from the sea, and from the hot breath of men bullshitting from nightfall to sunrise, or so Asha always says. Nehn kisses Asha on the mouth in greeting, and drops a few andris and pennies into the communal stone jug. She plops down with a congested sigh on the pile of sitting cloth on the floor, between Zevran and the sleeping Lath'inan. Lath'inan, it seems to Zevran, is always sleeping, even when she is awake.

“Asha,” Nehn groans. “This one wanted me to paint his you know what green again.”

“The one who likes nibbling?” Asha asks, eyes and hands fixed on the basin she's scrubbing. 

“ _Sí_ ,” Nehn says and sighs again. She looks at Zevran. “Why aren't you reading, _chiquito_? Keep reading every day so you can become King of Antiva.”

“It's boring.” Zevran only has a few government pamphlets and the brothel menu to read and re-read.

“The more boring your life, the longer you live,” Asha says. “Read.”

 

For Zevran's first tattoo, Asha wraps the thread taut around the needle. She licks her finger and uses it to rub away the dirt on his shoulder. She dips the needle in the clay bowl of ink and blood, then taps it, shallow and rapid, into his brown skin. 

“These are called _vallas'lin_ by our people, Zevran, not tattoos,” Asha says to him, before. During, she stays silent and he does too, because this is a quiet ritual, she tells him, and it is important. She draws a single line, for life's journey.

 

Brothel raids are old but these guards are new, and don't care about old bargains of body or coin. So Asha's hand is wrenched from its protective perch on Zevran's shoulder. She is shackled, along with the rest of the elven women. Then Zevran is shackled too.

“The guards will sell you,” Asha tells him in the dungeon of Antiva City. Globules of tears slip down her calm face, as if rain is dripping from her eyes like cracks in the ceiling and she is not really crying. “When the bidders are looking, you should stand like this.” 

She demonstrates, and he tries. 

“ _Sí_ , Zevran, hand on hip like this, then sway to one side when you step forward. _Y mida, mijito, mida_ —look them in the eye and smile. They will beat you for it later, but they will also fight for you, pay more for you too, and so feed you better, keep you safer. Better a strong halla for a human to break than a sick creature already broken. You last longer, no?”

He has heard of halla from her stories. “But I am not a halla,” Zevran says. He begins to cry.

“You are now,” Asha says. 

Zevran is seven.

They sell him.

He never sees her again.

 

All Antivan Crow assassins need a surname, but landless elven sons of whores do not have them. 

_Ara_ for journey. _Ina_ for life. An _i_ to confuse the humans, because Elvish is not allowed. Zevran chooses Arainai for his last name. 

 

Earlier, when Zevran is still a child, Asha rubs powder under her eyes with calloused fingertips. She frowns on purpose to find her strongest wrinkles in the mirror. “Elves used to live forever and never grow old,” she tells Zevran. “Until the humans.”

“But I want to grow older.” He swings his legs as he sits on the wobbling table next to her, watching her get ready. “How else will my voice deepen and my muscles grow?”

Asha laughs. “ _'Ma nuvenin_ 1,” she concedes as she massages the lines of her face. “Read to me while I get ready, Zevran?”

He does for a while, in Antivan and, less well, in Common. There are no papers in Elvish. His stomach growls like the cows in the slaughter of the leather factory next door. 

“ _Bendito_ ,” she says, giving him a smile. “You'll have food soon, I have many appointments tonight.” She dips her fingers into alcohol mixed with petals, from a dish, then taps them on each side of her neck and the tips of her ears.

“Do you love them?” Zevran asks suddenly, and Asha laughs again.

“There is no such thing as love, _mijito_ ,” she says. She kisses Zevran on the forehead, slips on her heeled boots, and walks out the door.

 

Zevran Arainai eats a hot meal and licks the hearty stew's spices from between his small fingers. He does not care that he'll kill people. He does not think of Asha. He does not care that he cut his hand grabbing a dagger the wrong way. He does not care that the human grown-ups eye him in a way Asha never allowed in the whorehouse, sending those who looked at Zevran or others his age away with bruises and hissing words, quiet enough that Zevran could not hear but loud enough that Zevran could see her spit flying at them. He does not care that nobody here speaks Elvish, or that he's never seen so many flat ears and pale eyes in one place.

Zevran just eats and eats until the back of his neck throbs with fullness.

He needs to eat. He is not immortal, after all.

***

Mukarukan thinks she remembers how the sun feels when it's direct and hot against bare arms, but she might be wrong. She remembers words from her mother's languages but can't recall her mother's face. Could she truly remember sun on flesh? 

Contiguous magic fills the Circle tower with crackling unease, a semi-tangible tone that rests in the base of her head. Too many dissipating spells leave a cloying smell in the stale air. The tower sounds out with the clanking of metal at all hours, from the Templars' armor, when they pace in duty and when they spasm and tremble waiting for late lyrium shipments. 

When Mukarukan was little, in the tower, she sometimes forgot to breathe. But she remedied that well enough. She has options. The windows at the top of the tower are open to the air because there haven't been very many suicides lately. It's nice to sit on the sills in the wind. 

And Jowan agreed to try _really_ hard to find her in the Fade and connect their dreams to kill her there, if she decides Tranquility is better and her Harrowing's far away. She'll do the same for him if he wants. He's miserable a lot and tells her about it, and she likes that. That way, he doesn't talk about her being an elf. 

Mukarukan of Surana is the only elf in the tower. 

 

Mukarukan won't kiss Jowan, even when he whines he needs practice, because he smells strange and he'll always be her best friend. But there is a human girl, Brigitte, who talks to Mukarukan when they are both sixteen. And Brigitte has beautiful locks of hair. 

Brigitte kisses her behind a cold stone statue of Andraste in the chapel. They pull up robes and look at each other and use hands and mouths, both twitching like rabbits at a distant groan of armor or tap of staff, ready to scramble away at any moment. After, they break a Chantry flowerpot by spinning each other around, hugging in goodbye, and Mukarukan shrieks, startled and laughing.

Relations are against the rules, but First Enchanter Irving won't even frown or scold if he finds out. Jowan complains that Irving “humors and spoils” Mukarukan. Maybe so. Irving might already know and not care enough to mention it, much less punish. 

Irving knows almost everything, except what the Templars do to Mukarukan, when they call her demon, or elf bitch, or knife-ear, or fadespawn, or mongrel. 

It's not Greagoir of course, just some low-ranking ones, who always seem to leave soon on rotation anyway. 

The First Enchanter has told her that nothing can be done about the Chantry. She thinks he means nothing _he_ will do about it. But she doesn't tell or show him things that might make him sad. He's old and fragile already.

The other girl, the human girl, Brigitte, she tugs on the tips of Mukarukan's ears and sighs and says, “By the Maker, your ears are so lovely, I wish I had ears like yours. Mine are so boring.” 

Mukarukan looks at the round, pinkish white cusps of the human ears in front of her. 

“And your tattoos,” the girl says, and Mukarukan flinches away before Brigitte can touch her cheeks, but the human girl doesn't notice. “I think they're so pretty. They look like little gardens, but upside down!”

Mukarukan curls her fists against her heating cheeks, over the faint markings she received as an infant that she knows the meaning of from reading and memorizing her own Circle entrance records _—unusual characteristics- elf, Dalish mourning facial tattoos; health concerns- acute tooth infection; immediate mannerisms include..._

She doesn't know the name for the tattoos in Elvish, because the tower library, though expansive, is limited. She's been told that, from a distance, some humans think the faded marks are premature wrinkles. At least Brigitte thinks they're pretty. 

But Mukarukan still tastes Brigitte's mouth in her own, and wishes she didn't. 

“They're tear streaks,” Mukarukan says, “They mourn the death of many of my people.” 

_By humans_ , she could add, but doesn't. 

She wishes she hadn't explained, because Brigitte only smiles and tries to kiss her again. Mukarukan pulls back.

***

_In the days following your Harrowing on your twenty-fourth birthday, in the days following the spurt of Jowan's blood that signified his dabbling and his lies, you search your dreams for Mouse, among distorted ripples of fire and land, vague drifting shapes, gaping holes mawing and yawning among walls, dying plants growing up and back down into the unstable ground. Not for bargaining, no, you have no need to join forces with demons. You are very careful, avoiding even the appropriate, allowed spells you find hypocritical. You are a force of entropy enough by existing. You have no need for magicking it too, for parasitic, draining, or life-meddling power._

_Not for bargaining. For answers._

_The simplicity of a “true test” discovered in the midst of a false test, of trickery, appeals to something inside of you. Maybe you crave resolution for the days your people became like a mouse among the careless stampeding of human footsteps. Sloth fell easily enough to your dedicated task. Rage was weak, obliterated in a moment. But who is Mouse? What demon? Why secret? Into being how?_

_First Enchanter Irving is kind to you, but you sometimes wonder if you see glimpses of his face when you squint along the unstable, hole-riddled ground, seeking the demon in disguise. You question if he made Mouse, for you, for your Harrowing, to test you. You wonder if demons are born of the Circle's rituals just as much as apostates'. But nothing is certain, least of all Chantry doings, Circle doings, Harrowings._

_In your dreams, in your spiritual traveling, you are forever consuming. Objects, artifacts, resources, the blood of slippery veins of lyrium. When awaking, you must try not to mourn, for that which you held there, in the Fade, has no use to you anymore. A well of power in the Fade, and you return weak. A feast in the Fade, and you wake hungry. You find it an exercise in impermanence, building your life in this other intangible world, yet never building anything at all outside that dissolving realm of ghosts and conjoined timelines, taunting you with futures you won't remember until they've happened._

_But you gain more confidence in traversing the Fade._

_But you stop looking in every corner._

_But you forget Mouse. For a while._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  1 "As you wish" or "I want what you want" (Elvish) 


	2. Chapter 2

_A griffon swallows the panicked recruit, Jory, whole. A baby is there, alone and dying. You nurse the infant, but your tainted blood means it will never cry again, a silent observer to a world in shambles. The griffon grazes with sick halla. You lose the soles of your boots in the swamp._

_Everywhere, everywhere, is the virgin human soldier with the blood sick like yours, his form scattered and multiplied and translucent and scrounging for weapons and roses in your dreams, seeping light wisps like a blighted river, young and bulky like a mabari pup._

_You want to keep him at your feet and stroke his red hair. You want to fuck everyone he wants, and watch his face fall. You want to destroy everyone else, to only fuck him, forever. You want to destroy him. You want to keep him untouched and naive away from destruction. The halla are eating each other in pairs. The last remaining is bloated and births a silent infant._

***

“I still miss him.” Alistair throws little jagged pebbles into the dirt by the main campfire. Morrigan's empty fire is there in the distance, lit out of wastefulness and habit. “I miss him every day.”

Mukarukan nods. “I know.”

Her legs ache, even propped with her bedroll. The crackling fire sounds like tiny breaking bones to her uneasy mood, but Leliana's quiet humming soothes a little.

“Duncan was the best of all of us,” Alistair says, voice choked.

Mukarukan stays silent, an opportunity he'll usually rampage over with enthusiastic conversation.

But this time he says, “What? Did you not think so?”

She sighs and waits for her thoughts to collect in the flickering light. Then she says, “He never told us about the Joining. Wouldn't even let Jory out when he was terrified and only wanted to see his family.”

“He agreed! He _agreed_ to be recruited.”

She plucks a piece of grass and slices it with her thumbnail. “People can change their minds, Alistair. They shouldn't be _murdered_ for it. I respected Duncan, but I can never forgive him for that.”

“Yeah, except—except. We're in a war! Do you know how many more Fereldens would die if Warden recruits were just able to—”

“I don't _care_. Maker, Alistair, you're so full of _shit_.” She sits up straighter, pushing aside her bedroll, and her voice rises. “Fuck Ferelden. Who are we really saving if we do that? People deserve every chance to turn back.”

“You're perfectly content and we didn't tell you.” Alistair frowns. “Some people just have what it takes.”

It's a convoluted compliment meant to appease, as his eyes shift around to the other camp members starting to watch them, but Mukarukan's anger only grows.

“Actually, I was 'perfectly' betrayed, even if I seemed content. We don't all throw our hearts around to splatter on everyone else like you do.”

Alistair looks stricken. “But—I didn't know that you—”

“What's done is done, I'll go more mad trying to hold on to resentment. What was the point of telling you?”

“I'm sorry,” he says, but he doesn't mean it, and she can see him shutting down, closing off. “I didn't know you hated being a Grey Warden so much. Must be even worse since I'm—since I'm the only other one and I guess I—splatter. People. With my... splattery... feelings. I'm sorry you _feel_ that way.”

He's closing to her, he's closing, and she can never stand it.

So she says, “I love it,” gently, in the way she always regrets later when she thinks about the costs of appeasement; the discomfort at how Alistair stops her from standing her ground, when she can plant herself, small but immovable, in front of any other. “I love being a Warden. I would have chosen it, knowing everything. But... you need to realize that I wasn't given the information to truly make any choice at all.”

Alistair nods as his expression opens to her again. She's yet to fail at assuaging him, comforting him, something that brings her a kind of pride, empty though it is. The cost to her is another matter.

“I guess...” he begins. “I guess I've tried not to think about that because I didn't have a real choice either. I realize that... that was selfish of me. Maker, I'm an ass. I'm sorry.”

She nods. “I understand.”

He smiles sheepishly. “You understand I'm an ass, do you?”

“Oh, I know some things about your ass now.”

“Hmm.” His voice goes softer, lower. “Couldn't imagine why.”

He grips her knee with the cocky, headstrong confidence of someone shaky and stuttering who's being taught, for good or naught, that he can have what he wants.

There is something to be said about being the only two survivors. Something that makes her dream a gray-haired Alistair kissing the side of her toe and laughing the same laugh he laughs today.

Even though she knows the things she builds in the Fade will always disappear.

***

The assassin from Antiva rests in the dust.

He's reclined as if comfortable, slim muscles of his brown legs leading up and up to skirted flaps of leather armor. His nose is pointed, his ears are pointed, and his eyes are amused, as if he's lounging, not recently unconscious.

He asks for his life with rushed but practiced flirting that makes Mukarukan's stomach burn, her throat compelling her to swallow three, four, times in a row. Either she will kill him, or she will not, but she will not spare him for the sexual favors he offers, will not take an advantage like that from anyone.

Others have, from him. She sees that he's used to being taken up on the offer.

His name is Zevran Arainai, Zev to his friends, and he is desperate under his calm unconcern and quirking lips.

He tells Mukarukan all kinds of things. He calls her a deadly goddess of sex, and himself pretty. He grasps at everything possible, in a measured pace as if in an attempt to outweigh his own absurdity. This would never work; this would be laughable, save she's not going to kill him, of course she's not, because:

“The Crows bought me young. I was a bargain, too, or so I was lead to believe,” Zevran says, and she starts.

Mukarukan tries to end his pathetic flirting as quickly as possible because her chest aches from it. She helps Zevran up, shakes his hand, and refuses his flirtatious inquiry into her tent and if her bed needs warming. She tells him he's free to go or stay, he chooses stay, and she escapes. She needs to focus on anything but the white ox flayed and streaked in pinks and burgundies next to the broken merchant caravan, anything but Alistair's shocked disapproval next to her, anything but the wrinkles on Zevran's face that is otherwise clear and not yet middle aged.

Mukarukan wanders until she is alone, then curls her fists into dirt and flings it into the open space of green grass in front of her. Tree leaves rustle. A dragonling attacks and then dies with a pathetic squeak that makes her want to cry. She doesn't.

Then she confronts Alistair.

“Alistair, of course I wasn't going to kill him! He was _enslaved_.”

“I didn't get that out of what he said!”

“He literally said _he never gets paid for doing anything_ , and that he was _sold_ to the Crows when he was a child. What do you think that means?” She's yelling now, but she can't stop.

“Well, he tried to kill you!” Alistair says. “So that's still no excuse! He could have chose not to!”

For once, Mukarukan turns her back and leaves Alistair stewing.

 

During their travels, Mukarukan overhears Alistair ask Leliana what women see in Zevran, as if Zevran only sleeps with women and as if Zevran's compensatory sex appeal is the reason Mukarukan slept in a tent reeking of mustiness for seven days instead of at Alistair's side. As if that's the reason she hates Alistair for demanding she murder an elf who speaks Antivan, as Mukarukan's mother spoke before Mukarukan's dreams began and the Templars came. An elf who never had a choice.

What's her life to that? Perhaps Zevran will try to kill her again. Of course he might. It doesn't matter. Wouldn't she do the same? Does Alistair hate every weapon that Loghain chooses to place at his side?

He does hate, it seems, when the weapon is living, breathing, with eyes wet like steam, with bare, brown-skinned thighs.

***

Word of his father's death comes to Nathaniel while he is cleaning his benefactor's weapons. A polishing cloth snags on a blade edge and a shrill ring sounds. While Nathaniel's ears still echo it, the sound of crunching dirt tells him someone approaches.

“Rendon Howe has passed in battle,” the knight who was once his father's friend says.

Nathaniel bows his head, but does not have a chance to respond.

“Get off my estate,” the knight says. “Your father has been shamed, and you will cost us much if you linger.”

***

Zevran stares at Mukarukan luridly—his words—after she gives him permission. He even informs her when he's doing so.

“Only” and “ever” are Alistair's words, not hers, and Mukarukan longs away from them. She dreams, knowing how easy it would be to kiss Zevran, knowing how easy it would be to fuck Zevran, knowing he would say yes, with enthusiasm no less, no questions, no demands. She does nothing, knowing how easy it would be to make Alistair weep. Knowing how easy it would be to make Zevran the escape, the fun, the adventure, without attending to Zevran's needs.

She knows he has them, all the more because she can't see them. She wishes—no.

But when Zevran curses, “ _Me cago en la mar salada!_ ”2 when he can't get a lock open after she requests it.

When Zevran claims the lock is literally impossible, and she rolls her eyes and adds, “for you,” and he pretends not to have heard.

When Zevran looks surprised that she says, “Thank you anyway,” and means it.

When Zevran bows his head and tells her that her _vallas'lin_ are beautiful, and Mukarukan knows he knows what the tattoos mean, and she wants to touch her forehead to his and sit in silence with him because they are of the same people.

When Zevran asks her if she has any more tattoos in less... visible... locations, because Zevran deflects everything with innuendo, especially the important things.

When Alistair is pale and pink and baring himself, and Zevran is brown and gold and hidden inside a part of himself she hasn't reached yet, might never reach, she... longs.

She cups a hand over Alistair's mouth to smother his gasps and “Oh Maker!”s, but Zevran's smiles in the mornings tell her he's heard, tell her he wants her (and Alistair too, no doubt), but also tell her he is not greedy. Zevran longs outwards but does not lash out. He wants her to be happy, even if without him.

Zevran makes Mukarukan feel like she can breathe. Zevran makes her a better person, less dazed, less tied to wisps of the Fade.

But she is nothing if not loyal.

***

Were it not for his bow, Nathaniel would not survive the Free Marches winter.

***

“Puppet king,” Loghain calls Alistair.

“Puppeteer,” Loghain calls Mukarukan.

Close enough, Mukarukan thinks.

Not that she moves his arms and legs and makes him dance. She wanted Alistair long before he was Theirin, when he was just a bulky human stranger, bad at flirting and alarmingly naive.

But of course she wants power. Of course she wants influence. She's not using Alistair, and she's not using anything on him, not even coercion, and certainly no magic. But if she could be Queen? Her people. Her _people_.

Mukarukan boasts her Grey Warden status, dangles it whenever she has need of it and sometimes when it can bite her in the ass too. It's her best tool to stop the everyday atrocities she sees. A throned elf would be even better, with a royal title alone, even if she played no part in Alistair's ruling decisions. And Alistair loves her.

Mukarukan is not naive, but she forgets that the untried never love as long as they claim they will.

 

Alistair, soon to be king, weeps when he leaves her for being barren, for being an elf, for being a mage, for being a woman with more blood on her robes than gold. For daring to hope that someone would be offered influence and still stand by her side in all that she is.

Mukarukan prepared herself for this possibility. She just didn't expect it to come the moment Alistair is slated to be king. She didn't think that Alistair would entirely save himself the trouble of hearing the murmuring about King Theirin's knife-ear whore queen using Dalish mind control to open Ferelden to invaders. No. He's squashed those before they've even begun. No sense in bothering. Oh, but he'll love her forever, though!

She could have forgiven him weakness, could have forgiven his love collapsing like a rotting building to the pressure of thin-lipped human nobles whispering in his ears. Arl Eamon, and all the rest. But she can't forgive him this foresight. This not bothering to try.

She's glad Alistair's still prude enough to balk at the idea of taking her as a mistress, beside a different queen. Mukarukan doesn't want to learn if she would have said yes to a proposal like that.

Mukarukan paces down the stone corridors of Arl Eamon's Denerim estate, where she feels more like an impostor than a guest. Her arms tremble with fury, shame, and the memory of Alistair's big, fumbling hands on her.

The other elvhen she sees here are servants, and they are too panicked about the possibility of beatings to speak with her.

***

When they camp that same evening, outside of Denerim, she finds Zevran.

Mukarukan could bide her time, she could wait, but time isn't something any of those around have much of, and she's not ashamed to seek the comfort Zevran has been enthusiastically offering this whole time, comfort from someone who speaks to her, not at her. Who doesn't see her as too socially uncouth to love out loud. Who, frankly, doesn't give a shit about politics, and in her planning and maneuvers and hopes and fears, is a glimpse she needs into a life where living happens, no more, but no less.

Zevran is just as resolute as she is about ignoring Alistair's teariness, and their stunned traveling companions, as she immediately asks Zevran to join her in her tent. No demands. No ultimatums on his life, away from the Crows. Only that if he wants her, she wants him too.

Zevran offers no surprise that they have not even kissed and now she wishes to lay with him, tonight. He asks no complicated questions. Alistair is gone from her bed now for good, and Zevran does not seek to bring his memory back in it with probing words. Zevran is with her, she is with Zevran. That is all, and that is enough.

They are both experienced, but that offers its own awkwardness. No mumbled apologies or fumbling, no blushing, no uncertain placement of limbs, no, but two people so trained on reading the other's pleasure and skillfully meeting it that they forget to stay conscious of the moments they are in. They find themselves stumped for passion, flooded with possibilities, more skilled than frantic.

They sit, cross-legged and nude, having both agreed to touch, both happy to let slow-burning lust take its course. They caress each other's faces, and then both murmur, in near synchronicity, “What do you like?”

Mukarukan snorts out a laugh, and moves onto Zevran's lap, finding herself more warm than aroused, nuzzling into his face, against his tattoo. She feels more than hears the contented grumble in his throat. She pushes her hand up through his hair to the base of his skull, and massages with the pads of her fingers. Zevran sighs.

“You first,” Mukarukan says.

Zevran's steady hand tracing up and down her spine falters a little, but his voice is steady and casual when he proposes, “If you are so inclined, you could take the upper hand? I do not mind a little roughness if you will only be so kind as to ensure I am still alive when you are done.”

She smiles, though he can't see her face, shifts, and oh, there's her arousal. The warmth's still there but more urgency added too, a stronger, hotter ache, and she bucks her hips a little, gently, a little moan in the back of her throat. Zevran's hard, and she slides herself against him.

“Regular yes and no for now,” Mukarukan says. “Is that all right? No games and pretending, until we figure each other out.”

“ _Sí, señora_ ,” Zevran says, and she laughs and nips his bottom lip before kissing him. “Do what you wish, yes, I will let you know,” he agrees. “I would only ask that you avoid flinging humiliating words.” His smile is self-deprecating when he adds, “Some have claimed I am simply too arrogant to enjoy the intricacies of such play, but I prefer not to hear it nonetheless.”

“Of course,” Mukarukan says.

She wraps a firm fist in Zevran's hair, tugs his head back, and bites down on his throat. Zevran's hands go from seeking to lost, and his heavy lids sink, chasing gleeful delight into something more dazed, more raw. She scratches her nails down the back of his neck, feeling goosepimples rising on his warm skin.

Taking a risk and inferring from what he did not say in his request to avoid harsh words, Mukarukan whispers, “You're gorgeous, Zevran. Everything about you, when you're flirting, when you're tired, when you're fighting. I love watching you.”

“I...” he tries, panting. “I am glad that I...”

She guides his wrists behind his back, and squeezes them together in her hands, his skin hot, his heartbeat pulsing under her thumbs. Zevran drops his forehead down against her shoulder, his breath shallow and speeding.

After that, everything begins to work out perfectly.

***

Zevran likes when Mukarukan fights by his side. It doesn't matter to Zevran that they don't have some ancient link giving them the synchronized fluidity of her fights next to Alistair. Yes, those two strike awe or death, respectively, in their friends or foes, weaving together like a perfectly choreographed dance. It is very attractive. But it is not really about them, just about their blood. Having no such mystical advantage, Zevran still moves with Mukarukan in battle, slipping in and out of stealthing shadows, dragging enemies away from her with taunts and laughter. The Fade shields and baubles pulsing and floating around and above Mukarukan mean she's far more protected than Zevran's nimble feet and leather armor offer him, but he likes to show off, and she keeps him healed.

Every time they battle together, they fuck better later. And every time they fuck, their next battles are more in tune. It is a cycle Zevran cannot find himself regretting.

 

In a sunny back alley, he and his Warden litter the ground with Crow corpses. When Taliesin is dead, Zevran asks Mukarukan what he should do, where he should go, leave or stay. He has enjoyed their time together, what with living and all, but he does not wish to be a burden. He is always becoming somebody's burden, and she is too pretty to have more concerns than those purple half-arcs under her eyes already reveal.

As though it is the most obvious thing in the world to her, and not the most unusual thing Zevran's ever heard in his life, she tells him he is free to stay or go as he pleases, that he owes her nothing, that she wishes for him to do what is best for him.

No one has ever told Zevran this before.

Does he even know what is best for himself?

Clearly not, for he chooses to stay, and problems arise.

Namely, Zevran cannot stop thinking about Mukarukan.

He would usually touch himself and be done with it, but though he tries, and enthusiastically, and frequently, and sometimes with the help of the very lady herself, it is not enough. Half the time, when he is thinking of her, he is not even hard. It is foolish, and it would be to everyone's benefit if he put it out of his mind.

The fool that he is, he decides to give her the earring instead.

She accepts.

Later, she smiles at his confused agony of sentiment, because she is nothing if not cruel. Well, no, in truth, perhaps she is many things, none of which are cruel. For she doesn't even force Zevran to say the words he stumbles over, only smiles and tells him she wants a future for them. He breathes away his fear. Mukarukan's warm thumb brushes against Zevran's cheek as he kisses her.

***

The night before the battle, Mukarukan tells Alistair he's been a good friend to her.

She's lying, but it's too near tomorrow to pass up the chance to see him smile.

***

After the Archdemon falls, after Alistair falls, Mukarukan commands they return to camp, not Denerim. She seems standoffish but Zevran will not take it personally. There are many reasons, and she is alive, so he cares about little else.

Zevran drifts asleep, and when he jerks awake, she is gone. _Maldiciónes_. Damn her for asking him to train her in basic stealth.

They find her alone, not far, somewhat conscious and standing with her feet in a half-frozen river, her battle injuries re-opened by her own hands. Her expression is absent, as if she does not know what she's done, her fingers covered in blood, pink flowing quietly away from her in the water.

“Zevran,” Mukarukan says, as she allows him to lead her to dry land. “Zevran.”

“Yes. I am yours, _querida_ ,” he says. He kneels to remove her wet boots, to dry and warm her feet and calves.

Wynne clucks her tongue and applies the contents of an injury kit directly to the forced wounds, too weary from battle to use her spells.

“Am I dead?” Mukarukan asks.

Wynne looks at Zevran. Though Zevran has long since trained his hands never to shake, and though his expression does not change, his uneasy jaw begins to chatter his teeth as he stares at Mukarukan's unfocused eyes.

He could joke and say, “Ah, who really knows? But if so, for a dead woman, you are incredibly lively and attractive.” Or, Zevran could tell her he is not shocked to hear a question such as that, having often felt like he was already dead or wished to die. He's simply affected by _her_ asking it, because she has stormed into his lungs and set up camp heavily, likely complete with Bodhan, Sandal, little enchanted bombs being thrown at his organs, and a smelly hound named Cokí. Mukarukan has been more devious and unpredictable than any Crow, in perching, so to speak, on his heart. That is why the question unbalances Zevran, rather than unfamiliarity.

He opens his mouth and draws in a breath.

“I felt both of them die,” Mukarukan says, then says nothing.

Hours later, she still won't—likely can't—speak. The camp fills with the sounds of Leliana's soft weeping and Oghren's chiming ax-swings at an unfortunate boulder bearing his wrath. Zevran sits with his own quiet regrets for their red-haired ex-Templar buffoon of a companion, and with his own carefully contained joy at the spared life of his Warden.

Zevran's attempts at comforting her prove pitiful. His vast experience with companionship tends to be much more nights of escape and pleasure, not nights of knowing what to say to the grief-stricken. Mukarukan sits silent and empty-gazed by the fire, and Zevran is unable to incite any response.

It is Sten who reaches her first.

“Dog,” Sten says sternly to Cokí, who is lying chin to ground in front of the assembled tent where remnants of Alistair's supplies lay untouched. “Your master requires aid. You neglect your duties.”

At Cokí's whine of protest, Sten barks back.

Mukarukan shifts next to Zevran, and whispers, “I'm not his master. He's my baby.”

“Unlike any infant I have ever seen,” Sten replies, then frowns at Mukarukan. “Warden. _Kadan_. 3 It is befitting a warrior that death travels in your wake.”

True silence falls over the camp, and all sound of muffled crying or weapon being damaged by rock ceases.

Zevran winces and readies himself to take his daggers to the tactless oaf for ruining what little progress Mukarukan may have made by sitting still under Zevran's watch, rather than peeling at her own flesh.

But Mukarukan looks up at Sten, and says, “Thank you, _sataareth_.” 4

She stands, and hugs Sten fiercely.

Sten pats Mukarukan stiffly but gently on the head, his face peaceful.

 

“I feel I am missing something,” Zevran muses aloud to his companions after Sten has retired to his tent, and Mukarukan is safely asleep with Zevran as sentinel. “Did nobody else get 'obviously you kill your friends' out of that?”

“Yep,” Oghren says.

“And... do Qunari embrace?” Zevran asks, his voice raising its pitch in disbelief.

“They do not,” Wynne says. “Except for... just now.”

Leliana swears that Mukarukan narrowly escaped a despair demon, but for the grace of Andraste. Wynne encourages this nonsense by listening and _hmm_ -ing at her. Zevran believes it had more to do with a war, an enormous fire-breathing dragon, the tragic mystical death of a former lover and brother-in-arms, a psychic bond through poisoned blood, a giant Qunari with an egregious concept of what to say to a grieving individual, and a beautiful Warden with a most bizarre method of choosing friends and interpreting questionable statements. But, ah well, he is just a humble Antivan peasant, what does he know?

And so, Zevran's Warden lives to see another day.

***

_In your dreams, Anora is a desire demon, but her breasts remind you of Morrigan's, shielded by carefully draped strips of cloth, back in the woods when she laughed at you and was dangerous was apostate but had saved your life, and Alistair was just an arrogant soldier stuck at the ends of the earth with you, nothing more. But though she has all power, though her father was Rage and her husband was Pride and her blood is noble, the desire demon only offers you one wish. You can only free the Circle, not your people, an elf mage can never be queen, what makes you think you have a choice?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  2 Literally “I shit in the salty sea!”; colloquial curse (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  3 Literally “Where the heart lies”; term of endearment (Qunlat)   
>    
>  4 “That which upholds,” defender, or foundation (Qunlat)


	3. Chapter 3

_Black birds circle and plummet, frantic. Some bash themselves against rock with their frenzy, but most cluster. Dirt crunches under your feet as you run toward the tornado's center; finally, you slow and realize the birds are crows, of course._

_You would almost smile, roll your eyes, save Zevran is there, in an alcove, with scratches across his face, the tips of his ears, his throat, his eyes deadened with tactical calculation and his fists full of knives that he holds in the wrong direction. Scattered around him are replications of his own form, but corpses, in various stages of decay. The crows—or to be more accurate, Crows—eat his remains._

_The dreams of non-mages are so much more obvious, so much more clear-headed, lucid, for you. You are grateful he's let you in._

_You blast a warning spell at the birds, then shoo them away, until they are gone. You touch his bleeding hands to soothe._

_“No, my dear Warden,” Zevran says, “We cannot stay here. They like to reproduce, you see. They will come for me again, they always will.”_

_You do smile now, and tell him that it's all right, that it's a dream. Realization crosses his face._

_“Ah,” he says, “In that case, if we can do whatever we wish, why don't we—”_

_He dissolves into awakening as he begins to smile and reach for you, leaving you alone._

_You grasp a lingering feather and run it through your fingers, watching each portion split and re-join._

***

“Goodbye, _kadan_ ,” Sten says very sternly, after Mukarukan abandons Anora's post-coronation gathering for a quieter place of the castle. Her poor, nervous Zevran, re-positioning banquet displays to eliminate potential assassins' clear shots of her, finally takes a rest to enjoy the wine and food.

“I will not meet you again,” Sten says.

Mukarukan's smile drops away. “What? Why?”

“Always with your questions.”

She waits, chin high to look up at him. She knows sometimes Sten's reticence means he's simply stalling for time while mulling on the right words in Common.

He was, dare she even think it, _eager_ when she learned some Qunlat. 

He is so far away from his home.

“I will be executed by the Antaam on my return,” Sten finally says.

Mukarukan's body jerks, startled. “ _Why?_ ”

“I lost my sword when I arrived in Ferelden. I cannot return to Seheron nor Par Vollen without it.”

“Well, I'll get you a new one!”

“No—” he begins, his voice harsh.

“Or I'll commission a new one for you! Maybe with carvings of still seas on the hilt, _aban aqun_?” 5 Mukarukan is proud of herself for the idea.

But still Sten says, “I cannot have a new one.”

“Why not?”

“Because it is not my old one.”

“Sten.”

“I must have my old one or die. I am soulless without it. And so I die. I avoided this for too long.”

“But—“

“It is the Qun, _kadan_. I embrace what must be.”

“No.”

“You slay your enemies, you meet _anaan_ 6, yet you are still _maraas imekari_ ,”7 he growls, his frown deepening.

“No, Sten,” Mukarukan protests. She kicks the toe of her boot against the stone floor. “What I mean is, I'll find your sword.”

He stares at her.

“Since you need it.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I'll go find it right now,” Mukarukan says.

Sten continues to stare, long and unwavering. She stares back, and waits. The side of her mouth twitches in the beginnings of a smile. 

Sten looks away and sighs. “You frustrate me.”

***

It is a pity, Zevran thinks, that not everyone admires the wet-eyed passion with which Mukarukan makes speeches. 

“I'll pay you whatever you like,” she says to the skeptical dwarf defending the Qunari sword. 

They found the blade with an exhausting urgency that leads Zevran to imagine Mukarukan believes Sten will implode into ashes if he goes one more week without it, rather than simply sit very, very grumpily and wait for her return, as Sten promised her he would. 

It is not an exceptionally beautiful sword. A point of breakage near the tip, too heavy, poor balance, a cumbersome hilt. Zevran isn't sure what all the fuss is about. And to think of all the Antivan brandy that could be purchased with the amount of coin Mukarukan carries and readies to fling away for the dented piece of Qunari steel. A travesty!

But, ah, no matter. Zevran will happily travel by his Warden's side as she wishes. 

“I have the funds,” she says. “I am a Grey Warden.” 

Their sullen host with a braided auburn beard squints at them. “It's that valuable, huh?”

Zevran knows Mukarukan's words will be lost on their recipient. Typically Zevran would say so. However, they got the man alone and away from his thugs, and Zevran does enjoy Mukarukan's defense of the righteous, so he merely observes with affection. 

“Only to one. To the Qunari, this sword is his soul,” Mukarukan monologues, in a way that would undoubtedly make Leliana proud. “And he will die without it. Have you never loved?” Nice touch. “Have you never had someone you cared for ripped away from you?” Now she's overdoing it. Zevran may need to stop her before she bursts into song. “What's a single blade to that, for whom it is just cold metal? For you. You can be a rich man, have an armory the envy of those around you, and also live with the knowledge that you have reunited two halves of a whole, made a warrior proud again, helped a man survive, regain the respect of his people, fulfill his life's purpose, help this part of him sing at his side once more!”

Mukarukan audibly regains her breath, cheeks flushed.

“Fuck do I care about some oxman?” the dwarf says. “Finder's keepers.”

Ah, such a pitiable response to such beautiful words. Zevran clucks his tongue.

“Farewell, my dear fellow,” Zevran says.

The dwarf looks at him, confused. 

Mukarukan blasts the dwarf unconscious with a spell burst. Her perturbed frown exposes her very charming dimples of distress.

She pries the dwarf's fingers off the sword one by one, and turns him on his side because Zevran's dear Warden concerns herself with such things as their enemies perhaps accidentally choking on their own vomit and dying while passed out. Mukarukan cradles the sword in her hands, squinting at it.

“Cokí?”

The dog barks once. 

She proffers the sword to him. “Smell like Sten soul?”

Cokí sniffs, then barks again. His rear end wags his tail stump, and he prances in a circle.

Mukarukan breathes out. “Good. Back to Denerim.”

No rest nor play tonight, it seems.

***

“I do not know why,” Sten says to Mukarukan, after holding his sword in silence for a long while. “But I feel compelled to squeeze you with my arms.”

Mukarukan grins and throws her arms out to him for an embrace.

“I got you some cookies to take with you to Seheron,” she whispers into Sten's abdomen.

He squeezes tighter. “You are truly _Basalit-an_.” 8

***

“Ah, but he is _your dog_ , no?” Zevran protests, though without turning around, cross-legged with his back to Mukarukan. “Imprinted on _you_.”

In the remains and ruins of the Dragonbone Wastes, muddy ground slides toward still water that Zevran, Mukarukan, and Cokí dare not drink. Their campfire casts little cheer on the shadows of tree limbs and huge, ancient hipbones and wing marrow.

“Zevran,” Mukarukan says, detangling his hair with her fingers, “I'll have a whole army of Wardens. I'll have city walls. I'm told I'll get a seneschal. I don't even know what that _means_. I just know I'll be smothered by officers under my command wanting to protect me, but I can protect myself stripped to the smalls and weaponless.”

“What is this, then?” Zevran points to her staff.

“An enhancement.”

He gives her a grin over his shoulder, before looking forward again. “Modest as always, just the way I love you. A seneschal? It is an officer who will wish to serve a judicial function for you. Little do they know. Trying to take moral decision-making away from you, ha!”

“Hmm,” she says. “That's not going to happen. But don't change the subject. My point is, you'll be alone, I won't.” She smoothes out the roots of his hair carefully with her nails, and sets to work on another careful, tight braid.

“You gravely wound me by your assumptions that I need protection, _ricura_. Am I so unmanned in your eyes?” In melodrama, he raises a hand to his forehead. 

“Only when you don't feel like a man.”

“Ah, true.” Zevran drops his hand again. “I appreciate those times.”

“I could just quit and come to Antiva with you.”

“But what will they do without you? Besides, this is a Crow-only task I'm afraid. We will be meeting like civilized people, which of course means they will try to gut me. But they will try to do so sooner if I bring an outsider along, no matter how stunning she may be. Even in both senses of the word.”

“Then please take Cokí?” Mukarukan leans over his shoulder to kiss the high line where his forehead meets his hair, then sits behind him again. “I could have killed you. Someone else could too.”

“And I will be grateful for death to come to never hear those words again. I wish to retain a _few_ of my assassin credentials,” he grumbles. But then: “Yes, yes, I'll take your hound.”

Cokí plops his face happily into Zevran's lap.

“You are getting drool on my knee, _señor_ ,” Zevran says, as he scratches Cokí behind the ears. “I will of course bathe you whenever I feel like it, if you are to be my dog for a while.” 

Cokí makes a low whine of protest.

“This is a stealthy mission, my friend. Mukarukan believes your stench to be a powerful ally in the fight against darkspawn, but it will give us away when we are lurking.”

Cokí huffs in grudging agreement.

Mukarukan finishes Zevran's second braid and seals the end with some wax she's melted by rolling it between her fingers. Zevran reclines back in her lap. 

“An army of Wardens?” He grins and waggles his eyebrows. “How delightful your nights will be while I am cold and lonely for you.”

She laughs. “I won't sleep with _all_ of them.” She pauses. “Probably. Anyway, Antiva's never cold this time of year. And don't be lonely on my account.” She rubs his stomach, slow and soft, brushing a series of gentle lip-presses against Zevran's forehead and eyebrows.

Zevran closes his eyes and smiles. “Generous as always.”

“I've even given Cokí a talking to about being a nice puppy," Mukarukan murmurs against the aply-named crow's feet creases in the outer corners of Zevran's eyes. “No growling at your lovers. But, remember, nothing too rough. He won't be able to tell the difference; he'll start thinking someone's trying to kill you and bite them.”

Cokí tilts his head to the side. “Woo?”

The heaving of Zevran's abdomen in laughter ripples up through Mukarukan's palm.

***

If Zevran is being honest with himself (which he prefers not to do but occasionally indulges in against his better judgment) he could have found a way to sneak Mukarukan to Antiva with him on the mission. It is not so impossible, nor unheard of. But there is some part of him that despite, or perhaps because of, his love for her, wishes to stay far away from her. Not for long, but for a little while, now that she will have other supporters around her.

He is trying. But a lifetime of habit is difficult to overcome.

***

The Warden dismisses the guards from the dungeon. When she is alone with Nathaniel, she opens the cell door and walks right in.

If Nathaniel was a better assassin, this would be a perfect trap. The woman is either absurdly arrogant or has a death wish.

She meets his eyes. Hers are deep brown like the ground after the rain. No. Like the ground she mercilessly felled his father upon.

Lie-spreading about his father, and the greedy squabbling and grabbing of his father's lands—it stinks of Orlesian hedonism and cowardice, gossip and doubletalk. Nathaniel has heard many stories of Orlais and its trends. Live, suffering, imported animals woven into hairpieces with gold ribbons. Incense ash painted to sparkle, ground fine by choking, wheezing servants, then dusted over nobles' bodies. Orlesians do it because they can, because it's exotic, because it's fashionable. Decorative wastefulness. Cruelty.

Nathaniel expects something of the like from this slayer of his kin, too. He finds a little of it in the outlandish, ornate belt she wears over her mage robes, but this, as well as the plainer rings on every finger, seem to serve magical purposes. They are not finery. Her single gold earring is old and dented. Her plain brown hair is much shorter than his own, and looks like it's been shorn by a dagger in her own hand. And she is an elf.

This usurper does not even step away when Nathaniel tells her he is a Howe. He hid his family name from the guards, but there is no sense in keeping it from her. He wants this confrontation. 

He knows his birthright is a surprise to her—Nathaniel has always been difficult to recognize. There's little of him like his father. He was often accused of being, perhaps, a Mac Tir bastard, or almost certainly someone's, with his aquiline nose, more dramatic than Rendon's, his mottled, unstable complexion, ashen in winters, his dark brows. Nathaniel caused many an uncertain glance in noble court, and many a speculation. _Antiva? No, Nevarra? Who has Arlessa Howe bedded now? Or is it just her bloodline without a drop of fair in it?_

It does not matter. Rendon is Nathaniel's father. Was his father. A father who may have committed questionable deeds in the midst of war, but none of the atrocities the Warden's lies have been announcing as fact. Arl Rendon Howe turned to Butcher of Denerim. Sadist. Torturer. Pervert. Slaver. Ha! Nathaniel knew his father. He used to beg the Maker for a chance to be half the man his father was. If Father wronged a few people, as everyone does in war, it surely didn't happen like _that_. And Father's wrongs-- did he deserve to die for them? To have his name blemished for history to despise? To be put down like a lamb for the Warden's supper, at the dining table once owned by the ruined Howe family, slain and barred from their own lands?

In the midst of Nathaniel's cold responses to the Warden's questions, he says, “I am not my father.”

The phrase is a simple statement of fact, not a desire to convince her—this murderer, this coldhearted, reckless mage—of anything. The phrase is not for her. The phrase has even caused him shame. 

For reasons unbeknownst to Nathaniel, her expression suddenly clears when she hears it.

“That's true,” the Warden says. 

She asks him what he will do if she frees him. Simple enough answer.

“I came here to kill you. If you let me go, you might not catch me next time.” 

The Warden has the gall to let out a snort of a laugh. “You're not helping your case,” she says, eyebrows raised up behind her uneven fringe of dark hair.

Does she think this humorous? Does she expect him to petition her for mercy? The same mercy she showed his father and his Teyrn, both cold and decaying? Does she expect groveling? From him?

Nathaniel sneers. “I could lie, if you prefer.” 

Her eyes study him, and she calls the guards back. Nathaniel maintains his veneer of calm distaste through his rage-induced nausea. Let her do what she will. What's one more dead Howe on her hands?

Nathaniel prepares to die like the rest of his kin, in this filthy pit of cold, gray stone that was once his family's home, now claimed for a defiled, corrupted Grey Warden order. If only his grandfather could see it now. 

It is better that Nathaniel die. Perhaps he even wants to. Yes, he thinks he does.

The Warden tells the guards to let Nathaniel go.

To give Nathaniel all of what he's stolen, and allow him to keep it.

To strip the storage cell of any Howe family possessions, and give those to him too. 

“I'm sure there's a bag we can give him to help him carry everything,” she adds to her bewildered seneschal.

She frees Nathaniel, without any conditions, conscriptions, or even another word in his direction.

She does not even insist that he is seen out of the Keep's limits. Nathaniel could kill her at any moment for all she knows. Even elf mages sleep sometimes. Yet she threatens the guards on Nathaniel's behalf, not her own. Her fingers rest in warning on her twisted wooden staff, and she tells them not to take matters into their own hands, lest they face her consequences. 

As quickly as the mistake that got him caught, Nathaniel is free. And, Maker damn everything, indebted to the Warden for his life and for the reclamation of his property. 

She does not respond to his pleas nor the pleas of the guards that echo his own: “Why would you do this?”

She simply leaves him intact but for his pride, her neck exposed below the rough cropping of her hair as she walks, head high, out of the dungeon.

She lets him go, and he hates her.

Nathaniel hasn't been this confused in a long while.

***

After requesting and completing the Joining, Nathaniel tries not to dwell on his unwanted rescuer. Nathaniel's a Warden too, now, following his grandfather's path to redeem his family name, with the blood poisoning and insatiable appetite to prove it. This is his purpose. This is his focus.

It is difficult not to notice, however, the single letter his new Commander carries with her. The page has been folded and unfolded so many times the seams have sagged and do not unbend so much as fall open. There is always gossip to be heard in Vigil's Keep, now that Orlesians reside here, and one particular rumor surrounds an Antivan Crow.

Nathaniel fleetingly considers stealing the letter and reading it, but staunches his curiosity. Stealing from the Warden-Commander has not necessarily been successful in past endeavors. Nathaniel is also beginning to respect her as honorable, for she seems... equitable. More compassionate than he would have been in her circumstances. He suspects she has not spread the Rendon Howe lies herself.

Nathaniel had heard of his Commander as a fearsome horror of a mage, one who uses her abomination thundercloud powers to rule hearts and minds against their wills. The truth is less formidable.

She has a nearly dogmatic opposition to blood magic. She apparently once made a sleepless trek from Redcliffe to Lake Calenhad and back again to avoid dabbling in it. 

She keeps her allies healed, guarded, and strengthened to the point of her own exhaustion, and so Nathaniel rarely witnesses more dramatic shows of magical onslaught, though he knows she possesses the ability. 

She is also unable, it seems, to turn down a request for help. Or a non-request, for that matter. She is nosy. Yet nosy is nowhere near to bloodthirsty, demonic traitor.

Nathaniel finds it dissonant to watch she who is responsible for his father's death chew her lip and smile, eyes fixed on her cherished note, before tucking it away again. 

***

Delilah hugs his Commander, and says, “Thank you. I would have killed him myself if I could.”

The Warden waits outside. Nathaniel accepts Delilah's rickety kitchen chair for a seat. Delilah's eyes are bright, and Nathaniel knows that look on her. She's having _opinions_ , that she'll be entirely unable to keep to herself.

Maker, Nathaniel is glad she still lives.

“The peasant you've married—“ he begins.

“His name is Albert,” Delilah says, her lips pursing in amusement, her fingers plucking at the cloth of her dress around her waist. “And I meant what I said. I really do love him. I haven't prostituted myself out for the coin to survive, and if I had, I wouldn't need my big brother strutting around telling me what is or isn't beneath me. You should know better than that, Nate. I'm not a child.”

Nathaniel nods. “Fair enough, sister. I apologize.”

“Good.” Delilah rummages in a wooden chest near the table, and pulls out a stack of sliced, dried apple peelings, brown-tinged and curling like paper held to fire. She pulls one from the others and pops it in her mouth. “Hungry?” she asks, mouth full.

Nathaniel shakes his head. “Delilah, about Father. Was he truly so...”

“Yes,” Delilah says. She drops the fruit to the table, sits across from him, and squeezes his hands in hers. “I hated him. He was the evilest man I've ever met, and he deserved to die.”

Nathaniel can't prevent her from feeling his wince, not with her grasp on his. He shakes his head again. “How could he change so much? What happened? I need to understand.”

Delilah sighs. “You remember our childhood very differently, brother. You must _know_ , even if you don't want to think about it.” Though her voice is lighthearted as always, her eyes are damp when she stares him down. “A monster in a mask, one that you love, is no less a monster.”

Before Nathaniel can respond, she lets go of his hands, and jumps up from her chair. “I'm having a baby, Nate. Due by the Spring. You have to promise me to hang around and be a good uncle even though you think I live in a hovel.”

“I don't—“ he starts to protest.

“Good,” Delilah says, and grins at him. “Now what's this about being a Warden.”

***

“Do you still think of killing me?” the Warden-Commander asks Nathaniel very gently, by the too-flattering portrait of Mother. “You know, in revenge? It's all right if you think it. I'd still trust you.”

“Never,” he says, and Nathaniel feels like he's losing something. “Never anymore.”

She both assuages him and shames him by not even looking approving, merely acknowledging. As if it really would have been all right, even if the answer were yes.

“I request some time to myself this evening,” Nathaniel says.

“Of course,” the Warden says, and leaves.

Though she's near, accessible, Nathaniel feels like he's losing even more when she's gone.

***

Nathaniel and Mukarukan stand on one of the covered rooftop balconies of Vigil's Keep, bleary gray stone matching the splotched skies and the drizzling rain.

Mukarukan leans the back of her head against the cool wall. "Would you and Delilah like help with a ceremony for your father?" she asks. "A funeral? Or... maybe a celebration of... parts of his life? You know, earlier parts?" She squirms and can't stop herself from rambling. "Dalish conduct rites for the honored sleep of their loved ones. The Qunari lay no value on physical remains, but do have prayers for the dead, and obtain the weapons of their fallen. I know it varies human to human. Whatever you'd like, or nothing if you'd like that, or—“

"Mukarukan," Nathaniel says with such gravity she is taken aback.

"Nathaniel?" She peers at him.

"Mukarukan," he repeats. 

It's an extraordinary circumstance. Nathaniel only ever calls her Warden, Commander, Warden-Commander, or other derivations, even since they've become official friends, after he asked if that's what they were, and she, delighted, said yes.

“Mukarukan,” Nathaniel says a third time, then continues, “He was singularly bigoted against your people. You know this better than I. I required Delilah's guidance before I could even see the truth. He committed... heinous acts of power. I fail to understand why you would ask.”

“I'm asking because I care about you, not because I care about him. You're allowed to grieve if you need to, even about very evil people like Rendon Howe.”

He blinks. “I see.”

She loves Nathaniel unexpectedly and for many little reasons, but one of them is her ability to say her harshest thoughts and gain only his respect. He expects no false agreement from her. 

“I mean, where would we be if we couldn't grieve for assholes?” She smiles, though not very broadly. "Restricts our emotions enormously. Alistair was—”

"You all having the runs, too?" Oghren's voice bellows out.

Mukarukan jumps, the tingle of an arcane damage spell scurrying in her wrists like writhing spiders made of pins. She trusts Oghren implicitly, gives him a little benefit of the doubt for the signs of War's Sickness he also shows, just like her (and everyone she loves, really, who is she kidding). But fierce Andraste, he should know better than to startle her by now.

Also—what?

"What?" she says. "No. Maybe? I'm definitely not, but I won't speak for—"

"No," Nathaniel says, firmly, staring at Oghren with a look of bewilderment.

Oghren heaves a sigh of disgust, strolling up to them along the walkway. "Fuckin' human, fuckin' elf, fuckin' prudery. I heard you! You were grieving about your assholes! Thought I'd join in because mine's really giving me something to grieve about these days, but _nooooo_. It's all polite conversation now that I've interrupted the Commander and her richy-rich loverboy."

"Oghren, I have literally no money,” Nathaniel says. “And she and I? Are not, in fact—“

"You know that thing where it stings when it comes out,” Oghren says, “and it's more like somebody dumped a bucket of water out your ass than a turd? But that's not even the issue, the issue's that every time you move around, even when you're not taking a shit, it's like somebody's hitting a mace between your cheeks?"

Mukarukan makes a noise of empathy.

"And what, may I ask, is your purpose to sharing this?" Nathaniel asks. "Are you suggesting one of us take a look at you, dwarf?"

Oghren looks horrified.

" _No!_ You, you... pretty... scratchy-voiced... raven-haired... rogue boy, you can stay the hell away from me and my asshole."

Mukarukan snorts and sees Nathaniel's teeth flash in a quick smile. 

Oghren rounds on Mukarukan. "And not you either! Commander."

She shrugs. "I am a healer, Oghren. Bodies are bodies. If you're really having trouble, I don't mind taking a—"

"I never show women my fluffy red ass," Oghren says, "Unless it's in tip-top shape."

She shrugs again. "Want me to make some medicines you can use by yourself?"

"What, like those Crunchy Hound things?"

"Not... _reaaally_ like Mabari Crunch, no. I was thinking a potion."

"Will it have ale in it?" he asks hopefully.

"You can add your own?" Mukarukan grimaces. "I mean, it sort of defeats the purpose, but whatever you want to do, Oghren."

"Listen, lady, all I wanted was a little commiseration, not a Fade-spawn thingy creeping around my bowels."

"Just herbs, no demons, I promise, but no pressure, Oghren, it's up to you. And I do know what you mean. I just don't usually have that kind of troub—"

"Hmmph," he says, and stomps off.

"If you eat some plant matter, Oghren, it'll help!" she calls after him.

"I'm a dwarf, not a damn halla!" he calls back.

"Suit yourself."

"You are brave indeed," Nathaniel says.

***

"I think Oghren likes you.”

"I'd come to that conclusion a while ago myself. I suppose I'm flattered."

"None of us can help it I guess, what with that scratchy rogue voice," Mukarukan teases, and she's smiling at Nathaniel full-force, looking him in the eyes.

He looks away, thinking of worn, folded letters from a faraway assassin, and the curve of her upper arm when she haphazardly flings healing spells.

“Before we were deflected,” Nathaniel says, “You were mentioning... the King?"

Mukarukan's voice is brisk, and uncharacteristically automatonic, when she replies, "Not the King. Anora's our ruler." She pauses, tone changing again after a sigh. "It's just my own stuff, me me me. _Parshaara_ 9, ugh, I'm sorry. I was originally asking about you."

"I would welcome hearing anything you would care to share with me," Nathaniel says. "I know very little about you, beyond tales of your lightning-shooting eyeballs."

"See, I don't even get that, because I literally know no lightning spells at all. Not one. If I could raise morale with my eyeballs, or wake somebody up from unconsciousness with my eyeballs, or place a paralysis glyph with my eyeballs, or turn my eyeballs into two clouds of hornets, all right then, I can see that. But there's never any lightning. Anyway." She nods. "Thank you. Sometime I might share more, then."

"I anticipate it, if you so choose. And... let my father rot wherever you sent him. I require no kind words to be spoken of him. It seems to be what Delilah thinks is best. Maker knows she's always been cleverer than I."

Mukarukan nods again. "All right. I just wanted to ask."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"May I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Is my voice truly pleasing to you?"

Her smile reaches her eyes again. "Yes."

Damn it all.

***

After an easy but time-consuming journey, they camp on the way back to Vigil's Keep. Separate, discordant snores drift from Sigrun's and Oghren's tents. Less inclined to sleep, Nathaniel sits at the campfire with Mukarukan in companionable silence for a while, before she says, “I'll tell you about Alistair's death now, if you'd like.”

Nathaniel looks away from the fire to look at her. “The bastard Theirin, yes? You grieved for him, you said?”

“Ha! To put it lightly.” Mukarukan shakes her head. “I prepared for Alistair's death. I wanted to live, he always wanted to die in noble sacrifice, and I wasn't putting much stake in the eldest Warden's luck. I knew Alistair might take the death blow. But the moment came, and I just started sobbing and telling him he couldn't, and telling him I would do it, I would die, not him.” She shrugs. “Emotions.” 

“Indeed. Yet here you are.”

“He did it before I could stop him. One last act of manly human heroism, kissing me, leaping to slay the Archdemon. Creators, Nathaniel.” Mukarukan sighs. “He was self-righteous and racist all at once. At first, he said me being an elf was fine, didn't matter, which should have been the first clue. It matters. It matters to me, it should matter to anyone who loves me. But he was a Chantry virgin, and I was just _itching_ to help him abandon that. Plus, our shared nightmares, our shared survival... and sometimes he was just a sad little boy..." She suddenly laughs. "I remember he gave me a rose he'd found in Lothering. _Untarnished beauty_ in the middle of decay. It reminded him of me, that kind of saccharine crap. Awful, I was embarrassed for him. I loved him. I did. But I'm not beauty. I'm the decay.”

“Why not both?” Nathaniel means it as a simple proposition of fact, and only when it exits his mouth does he regret it and grimace.

It is the grimace of disgust she smiles at. “Warden Nathaniel Howe, are you flirting with me?”

He barks out a laugh. “I'm sure your rogue, what's his name?”

“Zevran.”

“Zevran,” he acknowledges, “might have something to say about that.”

Nathaniel doesn't know what he expects from her response. Perhaps a laugh or a troubled question of if he is genuinely interested. He would assure Mukarukan that he is no inexperienced lout, that he will live without a woman he finds beautiful. While some days Nathaniel imagines he'd like nothing more than to bury his face between Mukarukan's thighs as she unravels his braids with her clenching fingers, he respects her leadership, her friendship. He finds it impractical to dwell on unreal possibilities.

Certainly Nathaniel does not expect her to make a “pfft” noise and wave her hand.

“Zevran and I stake no claim like that over each other,” Mukarukan says. “I'm not lyrium, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don't deplete. Look, if you take this fire, and put a stick in it... Creators, Zevran would be all over this metaphor, just bear with me please. This stick's on fire now.”

Indeed it is. “I sincerely hope you don't intend to burn our campsite down.”

“Shush Nathaniel. This stick's on fire, but the other fire's still there, not diminished.”

“Ah,” Nathaniel says.

Mukarukan throws the branch back into the fire and it snaps, popping ash. “Love's not a limited resource.”

“Ah. So you're not like lyrium.” 

“No, I'm not.” 

“But rather a renewable kind of lyrium.” 

“Well—”

“So you're, really, ultimately, like blood magic.”

Her eyes go wide but her pressed lips are upturned in a stifled smile. "Nathaniel!" she scolds. 

He feigns casual arrogance. "Blood renews itself within the body. It is an apt comparison." 

Mukarukan pouts but her eyes are damp with mirth. "You know I don't use blood magic." 

"Of course. You're too busy being the loving incarnation of blood magic.” A thought crosses Nathaniel's mind. “Though wouldn't the Joining be considered a form of blood magic?”

Mukarukan stares and gapes at him, now in genuine horror. “Oh Creators. Is it? Oh my Maker, _concha de Andraste_.”

She proceeds to search the text of haphazardly strewn scrolls until dawn starts pulling away the darkness—trying to decide, she explains, if the Joining is blood magic, magic with blood, or a digestive process. Nathaniel keeps her company as she wonders aloud whether demon agreements were ever conducted by the Grey Wardens, and as she lectures to him about the Fade and the Taint as largely different power sources tending toward opposition.

Nathaniel finds himself in a bizarre situation, where he, a Howe raised in the Chant, argues to a powerful, deadly mage that even if it _were_ blood magic, it might not _necessarily_ be ill-advised.

What on Thedas is he doing? Has he turned into Anders?

Mukarukan seems to temporarily and uneasily rest upon the conclusion that as blood does not power the ritual, it is not technically blood magic. Outside of a literal and decontextualized sense, that is. 

“You know,” she says. “Like if the sweat of a darkspawn carried the Taint, the ritual would be sweat magic?”

She nonetheless details a plan to use her Warden-Commander status to access the Weisshaupt archives for more research.

Nathaniel considers making his way to bed before the light grows brighter and they will need to travel sleepless, when suddenly, Mukarukan laughs. 

“Me and 'my rogue,' you said. Which one?” The corners of her lips turn up, her eyes dark in the dying fire and dawning morning. “You're here too.”

***

_Sigrun comes to you in the Fade, her tattoos gone, bouncing heel to toe with excitement. “I did it!” she says. “I died!”_

_“I'm sorry,” you say._

_“No, this is great! I wanted to come with you on your suicide mission because then I could die in honor, but this is even better, because you didn't die, and I didn't run!” She beams._

_Stone statues surround her, springing up from the wisps of floor like weeds. Sigrun is stone, too, and you're not sure how she could have spoken. Her mouth has been destroyed by explosives, turned into dust at your feet. You kneel in the flickering sepia light and eat as much of the powder as you can, before the golems can be resurrected, before anyone can make Sigrun live against her will. Nathaniel's home is burning. Shards of glass slice your tongue, and turn the skin behind your teeth to fibrous shreds. You'll have to see Dagna at the Circle for healing. She is the only one, because, after all, only dwarves can be mages—_

_or—_

_no, that's not—_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  5 “the sea is changeless” (Qunlat)   
>    
>  6 “victory” (Qunlat)   
>    
>  7 “a child bleating without meaning” (Qunlat)   
>    
>  8 Non-Qunari worthy of respect (Qunlat)   
>    
>  9 “Enough” (Qunlat)


	4. Chapter 4

_The Architect is in your dreams, cradling limp, leathery hides, gaping nose holes, and rotting teeth, mourning his fallen children, because darkspawn dream, though the Fade recoils a little, pulsing, and the demons hide. He looks at you, his golden ribcage glistening, the lines of his mouth flat._

_“You are also my child,” he says to you, he says to the Taint within you, and you know he is here. He is not just a figment. “I will mourn for you, when the time comes.”_

_He reminds you of Duncan. You will give him your blood so he will not take it from others, unwilling, for his greater purpose._

_“What if the time never comes?” you say. “What if our plan succeeds and the Calling leads me only to your hospitality, a warm meal, some mead?”_

_He smiles. “You are a peacemaker.”_

_You point to the dead. “I killed them.”_

_He towers over you. He touches the side of your scalp with his clawed fingers. “As did I.”_

***

Nathaniel finds himself near Amaranthine's port without armor or accessible weapons, knocked off his feet and mauled by a charging war hound.

Nathaniel thrashes, then realizes he feels no teeth, only enthusiastic and vile dog tongue lathering him and panting. Nathaniel groans in protest.

“Cokí, _mi amor_ , be careful with Nathaniel,” Mukarukan says. “He's an archer not a warrior.”

She sprawls herself on the filthy ground next to them, quicker than any foe has dropped her, with no regard for her mage robes. Nathaniel disentangles himself from the dog, and stands. Mukarukan scratches Cokí's belly, then pats his side, then rubs his snout between his eyes, cooing all the while.

“ _Excuse_ me?” Nathaniel brushes himself off, and stares at the sight of dog and mistress before him. “Is _this_ creature why you keep Mabari Crunches in your pack?”

“Yes it is, yes,” Mukarukan burbles, not bothering to switch from the babying tone she's using to murmur things like “sweet puppy, sweet deadly, stinky _perrito_ ” at the hound. “And his beautiful gift of a slobbery cake too.”

Nathaniel detects no sarcasm in her tone. He questions whether he would be wise to feel frightened. “Do you mean to tell me you choose to destroy weaponry when your pack is overcrowded, rather than discard something that should have been in a waste pile years ago?”

“Yes. I put a little ward on it so it'll keep fresh.”

“Fresh?”

“Fresher.”

“Really.”

“Well, so it won't crumble and rot over all the other things.”

“You use perpetual mana for that?”

“It doesn't take much.”

“Your allocation of resources leaves much to be desired,” he says, a bitter, insubordinate reference to Vigil's Keep he cannot contain.

Mukarukan gives him no reprimand but a suddenly weary look. Nathaniel regrets saying anything at all, but his anger is too great to take it back.

Something else catches her gaze. Half-expecting another bounding hound, Nathaniel looks up to see an elf with blonde hair stark against brown skin, strolling toward them from the docks. Mukarukan leaps to her feet and closes the distance.

Nathaniel averts his gaze as Mukarukan shares a passionate reunion kiss with her lover. Zevran Arainai, Nathaniel is sure. Perhaps the kiss is ill-suited for the bartering, cluttered streets of the outskirts of Amaranthine, full of fishermen and merchants, though the two don't seem to mind, bodies pressed and molded against each other's. Their eyes squeeze shut as Mukarukan sucks Zevran's bottom lip. Their hands roam. Nathaniel still has a peripheral it seems.

Nathaniel already misses his absurd chats with Mukarukan, though they haven't been absent yet.

When the two pull away, they mutter hushed Antivan to each other. Arainai runs a hand across Mukarukan's face, and Mukarukan nips his palm with her teeth, her nose scrunched. Her lover grins.

***

Mukarukan bolts the door to the inn room, eases off her staff's shoulder straps, and props the twisted wood against the wall. She tugs off her robes, and cracks her aching back with a sigh, leaning from side to side.

“How did the mission go?” she asks Zevran.

“Nothing to report,” he says. He sits on the edge of the bed in only linen trousers. A delighted Cokí lies passed out across the entirety of the bed.

“ _Qué pasó_ ,10 Zev?” Mukarukan asks, softer. She goes to him, and at his nod, straddles him. She plants a kiss on his forehead, which has cooled a little, but is damp with sweat from the day.

“They will never let me be free of them,” Zevran says. “I suppose I have become a symbol of their failures as long as I live, so they will squeeze onto me with all the might in their prickly talons.” Zevran abruptly stands, letting Mukarukan slide back off his lap to catch her own balance. “Killing Taliesin, trying diplomacy. None of it matters. They will never cease.”

Before she can respond, Zevran gives her a look that is uncharacteristically disdainful.

“You should sleep soon, no?” he snaps. “Or did you expect some kind of physical satisfaction from me before you do? Perhaps other entertainment? I am a Crow of all trades. Surely I can provide something, though it may not meet expectations.” She makes a noise of protest, and Zevran gestures impatiently. “ _Dígame!_ I am at your service! Be quick so we can get on with it.”

Mukarukan sits down on the edge of the bed, in the spot not taken by the now alert Cokí. She presses a hand to the top of Cokí's head.

“Do only what you wish, Zevran,” she says. “We'll deal with the Crows. I'm just glad you're not injured.”

When she looks up again, the defensive anger fades from Zevran's face. His shoulders relax, and he sits beside her. He sighs, and Cokí relaxes.

“I apologize,” Zevran says. “I am like a child sometimes, I know. It's just that I'm not used to such things... not knowing what to do when it comes to the guild. I am more used to tolerating capture than being perpetually hunted. And... you are still here." His mouth twists into a wry smile. “Still interested, it seems, in what my very precarious life has to offer. Waiting for me.”

“Well, you did have my dog,” Mukarukan tries, and when that elicits the grinning flash of teeth she has missed, she continues, softer, “And I love you.”

He will not meet her eyes, his face flushed, but she sees he is still smiling.

“You must not think that I doubt you,” he says. “It's only that... I am not used to stability.”

“I know,” she says, and holds her hands out to him.

“Yet here you are.” He strokes in between her knuckles with the tips of his fingers, and plants a kiss on her hand. “Being back in Antiva City lead my mind to unpleasant places it had not been in a while.” Zevran sighs again. “At least _Moco_ ”11—Cokí perks up for an instant before snuffling and curling up back to sleep—“was there for some company.”

Mukarukan laughs, and nudges Zevran with her shoulder. “Ew,” she says, and covers her eyes with a hand. “Don't tell me my poor puppy accepts that name now.”

Zevran shrugs. “He may be less smelly after a bath, but his nose remains slimy as ever.”

Mukarukan giggles some more, then lets out a soft sigh and shivers when Zevran's hands trail up to the undersides of her wrists.

Cokí huffs, yawns, and lurches the bed as he jumps down. He slouches away into an alcove at the other side of the room, and begins to ignore them.

“I thought of you often, while I was away,” Zevran murmurs, and leans in to push Mukarukan's hair away from her ear with his nose. He plants a wet kiss on her lobe.

Mukarukan blinks away another pleasurable chill, then looks up sharply into Zevran's eyes, squeezing his hands.

“Are you sure?” she asks. “You never have to—“

“I wish to,” Zevran says.

Mukarukan searches his eyes and finds him genuine, his mood from earlier tucked away.

She nods, then lets her voice turn stern but playful. “And what did you do while you were thinking of me?

“Oh, many things. Sneaking around corners of buildings, purchasing a new pair of gloves, meeting with shady fellows who wished to kill me, plucking ticks off your dog…”

“Hmm,” Mukarukan says, dragging her teeth against the part of Zevran's neck he is blatantly bearing for her. “Anything I might want to see? Ticks aren't exactly my forte.”

“Oh, perhaps,” he says.

She sees the heel of his palm rub against his hardening cock through his thin linen trousers. “Show me,” she says.

Zevran reaches in his trousers. As he takes himself in hand, she tugs his trousers to his ankles, then crawls back up to the bed, the heat and dampness of her smalls pressed against his lower back as she sits behind him, her legs wrapping around his sides. She kisses the back of his neck, timing light brushes of her lips down his spine. Zevran's face when he turns his head to look at her is less troubled, growing more relaxed at the pleasure of his own hand.

Mukarukan sets to work, pinching Zevran's nipples, scratching fingernails across his spasming abdomen, and whispering commands in his ear.

They end up in a sweaty pile on the bed, Zevran's three smallest fingers rocking slick inside Mukarukan. His thumb rubs a light circle just above the centerpoint of her nerves. She presses and rocks the heel of one hand on his lower abdomen, in a way that builds pressure he likes. Her other hand strokes Zevran's cock gently and slowly enough to make him shudder.

Mukarukan scoots to kneel straddling him, clenching one hand around a buttock, the other gripping his cock so she can rub herself against the length of him. She keeps her gaze fixed on his. Zevran touches her lower back and the edges of her hips with the tiniest brushes of sensation, and as she slips herself against him, her body jerks, and she comes with a skipped-beat breath, and a quiet whine trailing into a sigh.

His eyebrows knitted, but heavy-lidded eyes still looking at Mukarukan's face, Zevran comes too, with a soft groan, up hot and wet over her stomach.

With one hand, Mukarukan runs a pinky across the slippery mess on her stomach, and playfully sucks her finger clean. He tastes like fresh water and faint traces of salt. Zevran watches, heavy-lidded, and shudders, a ghost of a smile in the corner of his mouth. With her other hand, Mukarukan strokes the damp hair out of Zevran's face and kisses him on his pointed nose, then his mouth, as he breathes and breathes and then closes his eyes and tells her quietly enough she was at risk for not hearing, “I... love you.”

Something in her lungs jolts, and she nuzzles his nose with hers. “I love you, Zevran.”

A deeper flush through the brown of his skin creeps into Zevran's face. He opens his eyes, dark and shining.

Mukarukan settles herself back against the bed, and makes a contented noise when Zevran, looking mischievous, rises onto his knees, leans over her and trails the tip of his tongue down the curve of rib to belly. He tastes himself on her skin, makes an appreciative noise, then ventures lower. She sighs again, and scoots her thighs apart a little more.

“Ah,” Zevran says, laughter in his voice. “Are those creeping legs of yours a hint?”

“Mm. A suggestion.”

“You have only the best of ideas.” Zevran settles himself between her thighs, and licks with broad, gentle tongue-strokes against her over-sensitized nerves. She might come a second time, or she might not, but with Zevran like this, she can simply lounge and feel, a slow meandering of sensation that she knows he loses himself in, too.

Mukarukan's eyelids flutter closed, another breath of a noise escaping her lips. She points one of her feet, and bends her knee to trail her toes up the inside of Zevran's thigh, then up the inside curve of his buttock, brushing gently against his sensitive skin. Zevran lets out a staggered breath of hot air between her legs, and pushes his hips back to arch against her straying foot, to give her more access. She wants to take him here again soon.

Zevran's tongue still moves, in slow, flat swipes, interchanged with wet, open-mouthed kisses against her.

“Zevran, this is perfect,” Mukarukan sighs out.

“I have missed you, _mi reina_ ,” Zevran murmurs, and she can hear and feel him smile.

***

“You seem perturbed by my Warden,” the Antivan assassin, Arainai, tells Nathaniel later, in a lilting tone.

Mukarukan sleeps in an upstairs room at the Crown and Lion. Since descending the stairs, the Antivan has silently checked the security of the place, the locks, the windows, the crowd of people by the bar. He's good, Nathaniel thinks, but other thieves paying close enough attention can notice his flickering, systematic glances behind the facade of casual cheer.

“She knows why,” Nathaniel retorts.

“But I do not, and I am the one asking, no?” Arainai sits at his table, mug in hand, before Nathaniel can extend (or revoke) an invitation, and stretches his arms over his head.

“Why do you think many of us have been sleeping here?”

Arainai finishes his stretch, and gives a dramatic shrug. “Let me see.” He glances around. “The zesty smell of sweat and cheap wine? The convenience of a trapdoor leading to a mysterious cove? The glamorous unsanded wood tables? The rapturously repetitive single song the tavern minstrel can play? That last one is it, _verdad_?”

Nathaniel is not in the mood for banter. "She destroyed Vigil's Keep!"

Arainai frowns and shakes his head. He leans forward across the table, and stares into Nathaniel's eyes. "No, no, no, _compañero_ , you forget a very important point. Darkspawn destroyed Vigil's Keep. _She_ saved Amaranthine. Never forget that she refuses to give up on lost causes. Here, I will tell you a tale. Has she mentioned her dear Qunari friend to you?”

“Only in passing.”

“This was before my days with her, but it seems the fellow was locked up for mass murder. Mukarukan passionately believed him to be innocent, for he refused to answer if he committed the acts, and only said he wished for punishment. So, she petitioned the Chantry to free him.”

Nathaniel will humor him. “I presume he was freed?”

“Not at first! No one wished to let him go. So Mukarukan threatened bodily harm on Lothering's Reverend Mother for the key, then let Sten out herself.” Arainai takes a swig of his mug, and then laughs, a clear, loud sound. “The true punchline, my friend, is that Sten was indeed the murderer.”

Nathaniel did not expect that. “I take it the Commander was displeased?”

“Oh no. He was on a quest of redemption, and so she treated the giant, deadly Qunari and the trouble she ignited in his name no differently than if she were freeing a gentle butterfly trapped in mesh.”

“She is a very strange woman,” Nathaniel says, and looks away, thinking of the not dissimilar circumstances of his own introduction to her.

Arainai shrugs. “You see, Mukarukan does not walk in the same world you and I walk in, and does not see the same world you and I see. In her world we are better than we are, we care more than we care. I much prefer her world to my own, and will not let anything threaten that.” Arainai's voice lowers. “I suggest you put your anger to good use. As it stands, against your Commander, it is... misdirected... as you archers say.”

“It was my _home_ ,” Nathaniel says.

“Ah.” Arainai leans back.

Nathaniel glares at him. “You don't believe me?”

“Oh, _'tá bien_ , I believe that you lived there.”

Nathaniel makes a grunt of distaste. “I'm not one for philosophical pondering about the meaning of home, Antivan.”

“Oh, my dear,” the assassin says with a smile, “Call me Zevran.”

***

“So I said, I'm not going to just go kill your mom, Morrigan,” Mukarukan shouts.

She is a little breathless like Zevran likes to hear, laughing over the tavern's bustling noise. Her cheeks are flushed hot (Zevran knows the temperature, he has kissed them) and her eyes glisten with mirth and the edge of intoxication. His Warden's gloomy archer has a much more cheerful sister, Delilah, who insisted on joining in Zevran's welcoming party fun, and screams in laughter at Mukarukan's tale despite consuming only a few sips of wine, her cheeks plump, her stomach swollen greatly with child, her swollen fingers not seeming to put her off her good spirits. Oghren seems to be enjoying himself too, drooling onto the wooden hewn table in sleep. Cokí, under the table, warms Zevran's feet from the frigid cold of Ferelden, even indoors.

“I can go talk to her for you," Mukarukan continues, "or go with you if you—but no, not good enough for Morrigan. 'Kill her or I shall leave and you shall never see me again! You shall make an enemy of me, Warden!'”

A very good impression if Zevran might say so, though he only knew Morrigan for a little while before said incident. Delilah cups a hand over her mouth in a bout of laughter.

“So, I'm like, I'm sorry it has to be like this, but if that's the case, leave. So.” Mukarukan waves her hands in the air. Zevran hopes she does not accidentally cast some kind of spell. “She leaves. Then we're about to end the Blight, and she's just _in my quarters_ —“

“No!” Delilah shrieks with laughter and shoves her brother in the arm to share in the joke, though Nathaniel only raises an eyebrow. “Was she really?”

“Right by the fireplace! And she says, impregnate me with blood magic with Alistair's demon baby, or I'm leaving! Um, what? No. So, she goes, go convince him, or I'm leaving! And I'm just like, are you serious right now? _Leave!_ And she's like, I'm leaving, I swear it! And I'm like, I didn't even ask you to come back! Go away! And she turns into a wolf and runs away.”

Mukarukan catches a dab of wetness running down her eye from her raucous laughter, swipes it away with her thumb, snorting, and then says breathless, "Chop down all the trees in the Dales, bring two pinecones to Anora and stuff them up her nostrils, cut off Oghren's beard—“

“Huh?” Oghren's head flies up, and he blinks blearily.

“And wear it as a hat, then shapeshift into a bear and devour an entire orphanage full of children, or I'm leaving right this moment! You'll never see me again! Goodbye!”

Zevran chuckles. Delilah's and Mukarukan's shoulders quake as they gasp for air between bouts of laughter. Then Mukarukan quiets a little.

“I saw her again,” she says. “Not so long ago. I guess I actually missed her. She was there from the beginning, you know. I met her in the forest before I was ever a Warden.”

“Whatever happened to her?” Delilah asks, sniffing and catching her breath from laughter. She stands up from the table to pace slowly in front of them, and rubs her stomach a little.

“After I found her, she walked through a mirror gateway. Haven't seen her since.”

“So she left again, never to be seen again,” Nathaniel says, one of the first things he's said all evening, certainly the first thing he's said directly to Mukarukan.

“Yes,” Mukarukan says, voice quavering as her smile starts growing.

Nathaniel is as serious as ever, but his eyes are bright when he says, “Best check your room. She's probably waiting for you with an ultimatum.”

As Mukarukan laughs again, Zevran's gaze strays from her to Nathaniel. Nathaniel watches his Warden for stretches of time just a little too long, with an expression most familiar to Zevran. Ah, good. As Zevran suspected. And better this than misplaced rage.

Delilah suddenly stops pacing. “My feet are wet.” She looks perturbed and cranes her neck to look past her swollen abdomen and hips to the floor. “Ru, I know you said incontinence was normal this far along, but I don't think...”

Zevran narrows his eyes, and looks at Mukarukan, who smirks at him. They're in for an exciting night.

“It's time,” Mukarukan says to Delilah.

Delilah gasps and her face lights into a huge smile.

“Would you care to tell me what's going on?” Nathaniel says, but Mukarukan only stands, unsheathes her staff, and casts a mild area spell on herself. “Commander, why are you casting?”

“To make sure the Taint doesn't affect the baby when I help with delivery,” Mukarukan replies good-naturedly.

“Baby?” Nathaniel says, then stares at Delilah. “Maker!” He leaps to his feet, then looks around. “We need to...“

“Huh?” Oghren says. He itches his head by rubbing it against the table then seems to arrive at realization between the puddle on the floor and Delilah's swollen stomach. “Oh.” He shrugs. “I've seen hundreds of those pop out. Just get on yer hands and knees and it'll claw its way out eventually. Kids are tough.”

Delilah hisses in pain, and bites her thumb and forefinger. With the other hand, she reaches out and squeezes some of the color out of Mukarukan's fingers.

“Zevran and I have a room upstairs,” Mukarukan says, smiling. “There's a nice wash basin and enough space for you to move freely. Would that suit you?”

Delilah nods.

“What?” Nathaniel draws up his posture. “You cannot expect my sister to walk up stairs in this state!”

“Nathaniel.” Mukarukan extracts her hand from Delilah's, then plants both hands on Nathaniel's shoulders and looks him in the eyes. “I know you've never been an uncle before, but babies are not scary. Your sister is not sick, your sister is not wounded, your sister is not in the middle of a Blight. Babies are birthed every day, even without experienced healers.” She pauses. “That's me, by the way. The experienced healer.”

Nathaniel lets out a breath and grimaces, but Zevran notices that he makes no attempt to extricate his shoulders from her hands. “I'm no help.”

“Agreed!” Delilah says. She returns to gnawing on her own fingers. “Go away, Nate. You too, Zev. Oghren, I want you to help Ru.”

“Surely you jest,” Zevran says. “Have I mentioned I grew up in a whorehouse? Do you know what happens in whorehouses? Pregnancy. More importantly, I am far less drunk.”

Mukarukan takes her hands from Nathaniel, withdraws her staff again, and casts on Oghren.

“Told you you'd never see me naked and pregnant at the same time,” Delilah says to Zevran, grinning through her grimace. “I'll be waiting for my two sovereign.”

Nathaniel rounds on Zevran. “When did you place a bet with my sister regarding her nudity? You met her _this evening_. She is married, bearing her husband's child, and comes from a long line of noble Howes that you dare—”

Oghren belches and stands on wobbling legs. “Babies,” he shouts. “I know babies. There are things about babies that Oghren is tough enough to know!”

Zevran winks at Nathaniel. “Would you prefer I rested my attentions on a different Howe?”

Delilah giggles. “The only Howe now!”

“Oh ho ho!” Zevran says. “How, now!”

Nathaniel turns to Delilah. “Your child will not carry the name?”

“No, Nathaniel.” Delilah smiles at him. “I don't give two fucks about the name. You want to redeem it, go ahead.” Before he can respond, she lets out a hiccup and groan at another contraction.

Mukarukan smiles at Oghren. “You'll be heating some compresses, all right?”

***

Oghren paces the room alongside the restless, cramping Delilah for hours, offering loud, enthusiastic encouragement, crude jokes to make her laugh, and suggestions on positions to encourage the child to exit, which he demonstrates himself right along with her.

Mukarukan gets some sweet bread for Delilah from downstairs, for there's no reason she shouldn't eat, despite what Delilah informs her of the practice of starving, dehydrating, and planting flat on their backs those who birth in noble families. Delilah's husband has joined Nathaniel and Zevran at their table, and Mukarukan is glad to see that Zevran manages to keep both of them relatively calm with tales from his travels.

 

When the baby is almost crowning, Delilah sobs, guttural and choking, and says, “What if it dies for the sins of my father? What if its arms aren't there and—what if—” She shifts from side to side, kneeling, kneading the ground like a cat with writhing hands.

Mukarukan, also kneeling, beckons for some more oil into her palm from the unfazed Oghren standing near. “Your father already died for the sins of your father,” she reminds Delilah, who leans her head against Mukarukan's. Her sweat-wet dark hair brushes Mukarukan's face. “Your baby will be perfect, _mija_.”

 

In the morning, Mukarukan changes her robes and washes herself of the blood and fluid that streaks up to her elbows. She walks drowsy down the stairs, and wakes Delilah's husband, who sleeps with his head in his arms at the table.

“Take the room,” she whispers. “Zev and I will get another. Careful not to trip on the sleeping dwarf on the floor at the foot of the bed.”

A sleepy Zevran half-wakes and pushes back his chair. He outstretches his hands to her in an offer. Mukarukan straddles his waist then lets her body relax; her entire weight drops onto him as he nuzzles her neck. She opens her eyes to find Nathaniel awake too, in the chair next to Zevran, watching Delilah's husband go up the stairs.

Nathaniel catches her eyes and raises his brows. She smiles and nods. He grins.

***

Amaranthine's primary licensed lyrium distributor is a human Chantry Brother with pale, receding gums. Mukarukan knows this because he keeps showing her his teeth.

“The profits from commercial lyrium sales are already immense—“ she tries.

“Our income is not a profit, but a donation to the Chantry's work,” Brother Gilfrey corrects.

“Yes,” Mukarukan says, “And I have seen some Chantries do very important deeds, especially in care for refugees during the Blight. But I know it's possible for you to pay the dwarf miners more, and ensure it goes directly to their pockets, not the upper castes'! If you insist, I'll even personally pay you the difference when I can.”

The Brother flashes another toothy grimace at her. “Forgive me if I misinterpret you, miss—“

“Arlessa,” Mukarukan says. “Or Commander.”

“Yes. But you seem to believe our primary concern is money. Your payment through us would be out of the question. However, if you so desire, you are welcome to donate to the Chantry tithe.”

“These dwarves are suffering,” she says. “What of your own Maker's will? Isn't it the Canticle of Benedictions that says, _'Blessed are those who are poor in the land. Be openhanded to your brothers, to the poor and needy in your land.'_ ”

“And it is Threnodies 2:7 which says, _'The Maker sends poverty and wealth; He humbles and He exalts,'_ ” Gilfrey retorts. “If you were really a Chantry scholar, you would know the Maker gives wealth to those deserving and those alone.”

“Look.” Mukarukan links her fingers together so they don't itch for her staff. “The working conditions are terrible.”

“You are not in Orzammar, nor are you in the lyrium trade, so I do not see why this concerns you. Unless...” More of that terrible, tooth-bearing smile. “You are a smuggler, perhaps? Do our funds impact your own illicit work?”

She gapes at him. “Are you serious? No, I'm not a lyrium smuggler! I'm the Commander of the Grey, and the Arlessa of Amaranthine! You're the distributor for guess which arling? Amaranthine! Of course it concerns me!”

“Without offense intended, miss,” Brother Gilfrey says, and she sees his gaze travel from her mage's belt of chain links and non-precious runed stones, to her breasts. Their mere existence, even small and fully clothed, is apparently enough to displease him. His lip curls. Mukarukan crosses her arms, and his gaze moves to her ears, where his scowl worsens. “Amaranthine has succeeded long before you were gifted that title,” Gilfrey continues. “It will no doubt continue in its success without your input. Respectfully.”

Mukarukan stifles the urge to tell him how Amaranthine would have been an ash heap were it not for her. Her head starts to ache around the temples, and her fingers quiver. “So your official position is that the Chantry is in the business of underpaying casteless dwarves to kill themselves with lyrium exposure?”

He blinks. “Dwarves are unaffected by lyrium. Surely you, as a mage, are aware of that.”

Mukarukan shakes her head roughly. “That's a myth. Dwarves are impacted by lyrium poisoning just like the rest of us. I've spent time in Orzammar, I've met miners losing their hair, their teeth, their minds—“

The Brother suddenly looks relieved and regains his smug expression. “Ah, see. Dwarves like that spend their spare coin on drink. Overpaying them only _worsens_ their health, you know. You're simply in ignorance of lyrium's _specific_ symptoms. This isn't lyrium, it's intemperance. An easy mistake.”

Mukarukan gapes at him and looks around the room, as if there might be some figment of a person there with them to feel disgusted alongside her. Maybe she shouldn't have had Nathaniel wait outside. She looks back to Gilfrey.

“I grew up in the Maker-damned _Circle_ ,” Mukarukan hisses. “I've fucked Templars through withdrawals! And you're going to tell me I don't know what lyrium poisoning looks like? Cute. That's cute.”

Though he winces at her language, Gilfrey states in faux-politeness, “But Templars experience no ill effects from lyrium.”

Mukarukan makes a shrieking, frustrated sound, then turns and stomps out the room before she murders a Chantry Brother just for being indoctrinated by the same myths most of Ferelden believes. Before she gets outside, she stops, whirls around, and storms back in to the Brother's room. He looks startled. She slaps a sovereign onto his desk.

“Go get a filling meal outside your daily rations,” Mukarukan snaps. “Meat. Dark greens. Then go see a healer. Your body's consuming its own blood too quickly, if the color of your mouth's any indication.”

She storms back out.

The door makes a cracking noise as she exits it, and Nathaniel raises his brows.

Mukarukan groans and hits her forehead against his upper arm next to her. “That oblivious pile of shit. I can't stand people who won't question what they're told.”

Nathaniel looks at her from above her head, then says, “You would have made a terrible queen.”

At first she's horrified. She doesn't need a sore scab prodded at by Nathaniel.

But then Mukarukan takes it for the compliment it is, and laughs.

***

“I leave for Antiva, come back, and find you've become best friends with darkspawn. I suppose I should have expected nothing less,” Zevran tells her.

“The Architect believes Grey Warden blood will free the darkspawn.”

“Freedom.” Zevran shrugs. “The freedom to choose to kill you anyway, no?”

Mukarukan gives him an unimpressed look.

He sighs. “Irony, I know. All right, I fell in love with you, why wouldn't all the darkspawn too? How do we offer them this freedom?”

“Well...” she begins.

 

All things considered, the rebuilt Keep's workers do a fine job of hiding their shock that the Warden-Commander is entertaining a darkspawn as a political guest. Only three pots of soup were shattered in the shock. The soup was lukewarm, so no one was burned. Mukarukan had to comfort one sobbing worker who believed she would contract the Taint merely by being in the same fortress as a darkspawn. Though not the kindest comfort, Mukarukan reminded her that the Wardens she worked with daily carry the Taint too, and don't contaminate anyone.

“You know,” Mukarukan says to clear the awkward silence. She sits up, head high, and leans toward her darkspawn guest across the way. The other seats placed around the circular table are filled with Nathaniel, Oghren, other Ferelden and non-Ferelden Wardens, and Zevran despite his unofficial status. “Ever since the very first dream after my Joining,” she continues. “I always wondered a little if darkspawn were actually just sad and wanted to talk with us.”

The Architect, Nathaniel, and at least three Orlesians stare at her. Zevran throws his head back and laughs raucously.

“A jest?” the Architect asks.

“Oh no, my friend,” Zevran says. “Consider yourself the luckiest being alive to have found yourself in her company.”

“Your people need a home though, right?” Mukarukan continues. “The Deep Roads is the homeland of the dwarves. Where can we find you a place to stay? What of the Black City, does it exist anywhere outside a figment in the Fade? There's so much I don't know. Like the word 'darkspawn.' Do you prefer a different name?”

“Darkspawn or Disciples will suffice.” The Architect bows his head. “My priorities involve giving my brethren their will back first.”

She nods. “You will have my blood and the blood of any Wardens who also volunteer.” She smiles. “The more the better, of course, as that way you won't need to take too much of it.”

“In that case,” the Architect says. “I suspect you will need to conscript more Wardens.”

The First Warden thinks similarly, though for different reasons. He's told Mukarukan as much, in another of his favored confidential reports. The deaths at Vigil's Keep were an unexpected loss for the Warden order. He'd previously been pleased with her ability to attract loyalty... until he discovered her recruits tallied to, in his words, “a human-massacring Dalish, one suicidal dwarf, one drunkard dwarf, a thieving, Orlesian-hating son of a war criminal, a Fade spirit known to possess corpses, and a dangerous apostate runaway, all but two deceased or deserters.”

Well, when he puts it that way, she sees why he thinks it's an insult when he calls her “the most radical Warden-Commander in recent history.”

“Yes,” Mukarukan says. “I will need to Join new Wardens who consent fully to being Wardens.” She makes sure her stare at the Architect does not falter.

He shrugs in agreement.

Darkspawn can shrug. She's now witnessed it.

“In the mean time,” she continues to the group at large, “at the First Warden's request, I'll be assigning a small band of Wardens to the Deep Roads Thaig discovered by..." Mukarukan checks her notes. "An expedition lead by Bartrand Tethras, co-funded by Joaquina Hawke. The Architect has been kind enough to arrange for a group of Disciples near Kirkwall's Deep Roads entrance to assist with the excavation. This Thaig is particularly—”

A middle-aged human Ferelden Warden, Blaine, lets out an audible sigh. He's a warrior Mukarukan doesn't know well. He drops his unused soup spoon in his bowl, splattering a circumference around his bowl with flecks of broth.

“Got something to say, mouth-breather?” Oghren hollers to Blaine across the table.

Mukarukan shakes her head at Oghren, and raises her eyebrows at Blaine. "Yes?"

Despite another Warden murmuring a warning to hush, Blaine growls out, “Why call for this dinner, _Commander_? Just so you and this monstrosity can make nice and pretend the rest of us are fine with it?”

“That's unacceptable, Warden,” Mukarukan retorts. “I called this dinner to discuss the First Warden's objectives, and to hear ideas and objections, not so that you could insult our allies.”

“Allies?” Blaine stands up so quickly his chair falls to the floor with a crack. He charges at the Architect and spits at his feet.

Mukarukan leaps up, too, with her staff, but Nathaniel and Oghren get to Blaine first, each holding a struggling arm. The Architect stares impassively at Blaine as he tries to lurch forward.

Zevran lets out a whistle. "This is all getting quite awkward, no?"

"Stand down, Warden," Mukarukan orders Blaine.

“Maker damn all of you!” Blaine shouts, trying to headbutt Oghren to no avail. “You might as well piss on Warden corpses! The last time this same darkspawn rat was _negotiating_ with us, it was selling Ferelden and King Maric to Orlais! Those milksop libertines wanted to help it infect everyone!”

“Excuse me!” an Orlesian Warden, Emmanuelle, says, jumping up too. “I'll ask you to remember some of the finest of our Order are Orlesians! Is this really what Fereldens think of us? We're not going to take over your putrid country! We don't want it!”

The other guests clamor in noise too.

“Listen! Everyone!” Mukarukan shouts over the din, to no avail.

She flares a light from her staff, and they quiet. Emmanuelle sits back down. Mukarukan pushes hair from her eyes, and then tries, more calmly, “The Architect has made problematic past choices out of desperation. He is willing to work consensually to free his people. Correct?” Mukarukan looks to the Architect.

He gives a single nod. “Yes.”

“Bullshit,” Blaine says, and spits again.

Mukarukan closes her eyes. “Oghren, Nathaniel, could you both please show him out of the Keep?”

“Yes, ma'am!” Oghren says cheerfully, and Nathaniel nods. They tug Blaine out the door.

Once the door closes behind them, Mukarukan lets out a sigh. “None of you need donate blood or any other service to this alliance if you disagree. But I have a responsibility as a healer to assist living beings, and we as Wardens have a responsibility to eliminate the threat of Blights. The Architect and I have a viable vision for doing so, by offering sentience to his people.” She looks to Emmanuelle. “I apologize on behalf of the Ferelden Wardens for disrespect to Orlesian Wardens.”

Emmanuelle frowns. “No need. I see now the Orlesian Wardens have a bigger concern than one peasant's running mouth. Darkspawn breed only with brood mothers. They won't accept sentience to only go extinct. You think you've found a peaceful solution?” She shakes her head. “You're naive.” Emmanuelle, and the other Orlesians, leave the table and walk out the door.

Mukarukan realizes her mouth is open and closes it, then leans her hands on the table with a sigh. "I can address these concerns, we just need to remember that—"

The Architect abruptly stands. “I take my leave,” he interrupts. “I will be in contact, Mukarukan.” He goes.

The other Ferelden Wardens look to her silently. Zevran inspects his nails.

Mukarukan reaches behind her back to push four fingers into an ache on her shoulder, and shakes her head. “Meeting dismissed.”

***

Nathaniel has little need for more funds after the First Warden's advance payment for his impending trip to Kirkwall, but he accompanies Zevran and Mukarukan in cave looting. Best leave Delilah and the child alone for a while. She claims he's spoiling the babe already.

As soon as the walls narrow and the natural light dwindles from the distance to the opening in the cave, Mukarukan nearly trips over a chest before Nathaniel can warn her.

She catches herself and looks down. “Well, I can't open this,” she says, hands on hips. “Could—”

Nathaniel and Zevran both start forward.

Mukarukan looks at them. “Hmm.”

Zevran gracefully bows out. “I insist, please,” Zevran says to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel ignores the feeling that he is being carefully evaluated, and takes out the lock-picking kit Mukarukan pressed into his hand as a gift in the early days of their acquaintance.

The chest clicks open, and Mukarukan eagerly backpacks the miscellaneous contents. She absently nudges her arm against Nathaniel's as he steps back, for she is nothing if not recklessly delighted by acquiring possessions for her soldiers free of charge. To Nathaniel, since the Free Marches, this is a clear mark of past poverty, which surprises him. He'd heard Circle mages were coddled and provided anything to meet their whims, if only to keep them more content with imprisonment. Nathaniel is ever learning the things he's been taught are wrong.

“Does this please you?” Nathaniel asks Mukarukan, though he knows it does.

Zevran lets out a long, low whistle. “ _Mi múkaro en el jurakán_ ,12 I see what you mean. He is so beautifully _genuine_ with it, too.”

Mukarukan grins.

Nathaniel, startled, huffs and rolls his eyes, but feels his blood betray him by creeping into his face. “You know full well—”

“Shh, no, my friend,” Zevran says. “It is good. Very good. Do not ruin it.”

“Thank you, Nathaniel,” Mukarukan says, still grinning.

Better blood in his face than elsewhere. This is his only consolation as he attempts to remain stern.

***

Mukarukan goes southeast with Cokí to seek the angriest woman in the Denerim Alienage. Just like old times.

Shianni looks more or less the same as when Nathaniel's father was selling Shianni's family to slavers. Shianni's short red hair is tied into pieces lining her scalp, her skin is clear and bright, and her expression is a staunch frown.

Mukarukan watches Shianni scratch _'Andraste was an elf!'_ with a dagger into the side of a house. Lights still flicker inside despite the late hour.

When done with her task, Shianni nods in acknowledgment of Mukarukan's presence. She wastes no time, either. “Death has ebbed and flowed like a tide since you've last been here, Warden. You used to have good timing, but you've missed a few opportunities, I'll tell you. Have you come to help us, or have you come to request a favor? Riding your past assistance like the most reliable of halla?”

Mukarukan bows her head. “I haven't forgotten you. I do request help. Mostly point of contact planning for casteless dwarves fleeing Dust Town. Later, much later, the possibility of helping an... unusual ally. But I offer my help to you, whether or not you agree to assist. I know your healers are scarce.”

“There's been death in this house only a few moments ago. Those still living have sickness, too.” Shianni narrows her eyes. “But don't step on Velanna's toes. She knows the herb wisdom you've long lost. Plus she's not very happy with you, you know.”

Mukarukan starts. Mukarukan didn't expect to find, well, the angriest woman in the Wending Wood here too. “Velanna? Velanna of the Dalish? Pale hair, shallow chin—”

“Watch how you describe her, that's my lover you're talking about.”

Mukarukan grins. “I didn't say she wasn't gorgeous!”

“Watch how you describe her, that's my lover you're talking about,” Shianni repeats, but now she's laughing. “Careful, by the way. You're in Anora's city now. She won't like you stirring trouble.”

“I think it's far too late for that, don't you?”

Shianni shakes her head. “I just mean, act with caution while you're here. You're not known for your subtlety, and I don't want any of the others to suffer.”

Mukarukan nods. “I understand. I know I have no right to claim membership for a pair of ears, but... I won't put the Alienage at risk, I swear it. These are my people.”

“Always.” Shianni holds out her arms in an offer of a hug. “It's good to see you, Mukarukan.”

Mukarukan embraces her, snug and warm. “It's good to see you, too, Shianni.”

***

Mukarukan has passionate friendships.

It seems to Nathaniel that is how she feels about him, too, and he has no need to complicate matters.

But then the elf assassin goes and does it for him.

“My Warden likes you,” Zevran sing-songs, once they are alone and well on their way to their destinations. Nathaniel left Ferelden before the other expedition Wardens. Mukarukan wishes for someone she trusts to arrange the first contact with the Disciples.

“I have noticed, Antivan," Nathaniel retorts. "I am her friend. We have said as much to each other.”

“Oh yes,” Zevran says. “Yet not more? You are experienced enough, no? Why did you not pursue her?”

“You, _you_ , are having this conversation with me?”

“Should I not?”

Nathaniel shrugs. “Neither of you get jealous?”

“I've sought pleasure with kings and whores alike... come to think of it, so has she. In any case, she has never been one to imprison others. You learned this, no?” Zevran waggles his eyebrows.

Nathaniel stays silent.

Zevran grins. “I fully embrace her passion for men who try to kill her. I received benefits from that, after all. And when Mukarukan told me your gear was Antivan! Oh, I'm in!”

“She has passionate friendships.”

Zevran laughs. “Ah, that she does.”

“Not everyone she befriends she wishes to bed.”

“True again! In fact, most she adores she does not. Which is why I thought it wise to mention that she does wish to bed _you_.”

“I see,” Nathaniel says, because he does not know what else to say. The possibility is intriguing, perhaps even arousing, but now is certainly not the time. “Your timing leaves much to be desired.”

“Oh? How so, my friend?”

“You tell me this as we're heading away from her.”

Zevran laughs. “Too true. Yet you will find I am very accommodating, if you desire me to tide you over, as we say in Antiva, until your return to her.”

“I will consider what you've said.” Nathaniel leaves it at that, slight arousal twinging, and suddenly at a loss.

***

The Alienage isn't the Wending Woods, by far, and the city elves aren't Dalish. But Mukarukan's glad Velanna has this much.

Living with them, Mukarukan witnesses how Velanna's glowering is tempered when she watches Shianni's full, flushing cheeks, as Shianni meets with Alienage laborers and helps them with guard abuses, or withheld silvers, or new clothes for their children. Mukarukan witnesses the way Shianni and Velanna kiss in slow bouts, and the way they do not soothe each other's anger, but, instead, pass it back and forth like chain lightning, to strike the most precise sources.

 

After long days of healing work where Mukarukan and Velanna both need to scrub themselves clean of sickness, they find a certain rhythm in Velanna making fun of Mukarukan's Elvish, while teaching her more all the same.

“ _Fen'Harel_ ,” Mukarukan tries.

Velanna scoffs. “Imbecilic mistake to make. Have fun with that one.”

Mukarukan rolls her eyes, and scrapes more grime from under her fingernails. “Tell me?”

“Dread wolf. I asked about the god of the dead, Commander Circle-Raised, not the dread wolf. One's a friend, _Falon'Din_ —“

“Oh,” Mukarukan groans out. She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “Obviously. I know that.”

“—the other will eat your face off then laugh himself to sleep,” Velanna finishes.

“They both start with the same letter.”

“No excuses,” Velanna says, and walks away, shaking off her sopping wet arms.

***

For Zevran, hopping in a boat to take him across the Waking Sea is little more of an adventure than hopping into a bathtub. Perhaps pleasurable, especially if made such, which Zevran always prefers to do, but primarily about serving a function, and filled with many splashing and sloshing noises.

His Warden's Warden is quite the opposite, it seems. Nathaniel appears to be terrified.

Not to any casual observer, of course, but Zevran has not seen that level of gloominess since he last attempted to give Cokí a bath, and Nathaniel is not even in the water, simply on the water.

Zevran perches on the side of Nathaniel's cot below deck, crosses his legs, and leans back against the wooden frame. “You seem very tense.”

“I despise the water,” Nathaniel grits out from his seat on a wooden chest. “I once fell off some wooden planks into Lake Calenhad as a child.”

“And this seems much like one gigantic floating plank soon to plunge you underwater? Yes, I see.” Zevran sighs. “Well, what should we do about your tension, hmm? I have been informed I am very skilled at relieving stress. Why don't you put me to use?”

“I don't make a habit of sleeping with men,” Nathaniel says.

But he is upfront isn't he? He and Zevran's _múkaro_ share this too.

“Ah, a very interesting fact,” Zevran replies. “Yet I am wide awake right now, and you appear to be so, too.”

“Very well. Put less delicately, I don't make a habit of having sex with men.”

“Is that what you thought I meant? That was of course the _furthest_ thing from my mind.”

“Is that so,” Nathaniel says, his voice dry and unbelieving.

“ _Sí, mi hidalgo harapiento_ ,13 I was instead going to offer a relaxation technique I learned from Mukarukan's dear Qunari friend. You see, first the other person, namely me, would crack each of your toes until a nice popping sound is heard. Then we must scoop up some of this sea water, and mix it with the grime collecting the decks, as to make sure nothing goes to waste. We then use this to exfoliate your entire body, and—“

“I am not opposed to relations between men,” Nathaniel says, alas ignoring Zevran's carefully constructed bullshit. Zevran hoped he could squeeze a laugh out of Nathaniel. Still, the conversation's direction is intriguing. “I have merely never considered it for myself.”

“If it is a matter of masculine pride,” Zevran says, “There are many ways around that. For example, the Rivaini Rudder.”

Nathaniel raises an eyebrow. “Which is?”

Zevran flashes his teeth in a grin and continues. “You bring yourself your own pleasure, so it is all very manly, but the other party—namely me, again, if you did not guess—clings to your wrist or arm to participate. Even to direct, if so desired. Or, perhaps, the Antivan Handshake? I wear gloves to touch you, so you are only stimulated by the leather, not another man. Problem solved!”

“You're making up these names,” Nathaniel retorts, and there is the chuckle Zevran was looking for.

“Am I? You will never know.”

“And you just like leather.” Nathaniel grins openly now.

“Ah, too true,” Zevran concedes. “So, what shall it be? Do you have an interest in becoming, shall we say, comrades in lack of arms?”

Nathaniel smirks. “You really expect me to believe you're ever unarmed?”

“Fair point.” Zevran grins.

When Nathaniel merely sits silent and again wears his favorite solemn face, looking away from Zevran, Zevran frowns. He quiets his voice into tones of sincerity.

“Do my ramblings make you uncomfortable? Rejection is not devastating to me, my friend. I will never speak of it again, if that is better for you. I will remain at your side solely as—“

“I am uncomfortable,” Nathaniel interrupts, “but I fear it's not your fault. It is never something I considered for myself before. I am more troubled now than when these acts were something _others_ did. If your offer remains—without the absurdities—I will consider it and inform you of my thoughts.”

“Any time,” Zevran says, smiling. “And do not bother informing me with words if you prefer to inform me with a touch. I would be willing.”

With that, Zevran leaves. Better to make a good exit than overstay a welcome.

***

Nathaniel curls a hand around himself in his bunk, a matter-of-fact and brisk solution for a persistent problem.

Maker, will the oh-so-noble Howe family be a work of art for the history books. Most of them underground rotting, one married into peasantry, the other touching himself in a dirty ship filled with dubious company, on his way to rally with darkspawn.

Nathaniel first thinks of Mukarukan chewing her fingernails, a smudge of healing potion on the soft underside of her chin. But before he comes, he imagines, too, what it would feel like to have Zevran grip his wrist and guide his stroking hand.

***

Nathaniel catches Zevran's glance after Meredith deforms into a glowing mass of sculpted red lyrium. They slip away from the battlefield before Hawke and her other allies do.

Some, like Nathaniel's Commander, take sides so fiercely that Nathaniel almost forgets there are other forms of heroism. Hawke seemed more likely to throw a joke than an opinion at any given situation. Still, for one so terribly young, just out of childhood, and for one so grudging to do more than flick fire spells at slavers between drinks, bets, play, and laughter, the unwanted mantle of Champion began to suit her. Hawke took sides. She chose to stop unfair slaughter, even at the risk of losing her own Templar brother. She did well.

Nathaniel and Zevran sprint through Kirkwall, the night chill dysphoric against the burning streets. The back alleys and the passageways through hunching architecture are empty now of any living residents or abominations. The only sounds are those of gravel crunching and loosening in cobbles and dirt, the popping, dying fires, and his and Zevran's breathing.

Nathaniel's blood rushes in his body. His fingers bleed from reopened callouses past his first knuckles where he quivered his arrows. His shoulder pulses with a strain his body has not yet interpreted as pain. Nathaniel's arm muscles have reached the point of overexertion in between trembling and cramp, where they feel fluid and floating, a storm on the horizon but not yet tearing the sky. He smells his own sweat and exertion-heated leather, and Zevran's too.

When Zevran turns to him during their brisk pace and opens his mouth as though to speak, Nathaniel grips the back of Zevran's head and charges Zevran back to the darkened street's wall.

When Nathaniel kisses Zevran, it's a sudden relief, letting go of some curse. Perhaps it is the curse of his father that falls away into the drifting ashes in Kirkwall's cool air. Zevran's mouth feels burning hot against Nathaniel's lips. The heat from Zevran's slighter, firm body soaks into Nathaniel at once.

Zevran lets out a hoarse laugh, and turns rough. He plays a game of hand-grappling and wall-shoving that Nathaniel seeks to cheat by thrusting his hips forward to distract. Nathaniel has been informed that Zevran likes a hard cock like he likes little else, and he knows Zevran likes much. And, Maker, is Nathaniel hard. He feels disoriented by his new sense of ease, unstructured movement, careless want. Nathaniel clenches his hands at Zevran's hips, and sucks on the skin over the hinge of Zevran's jaw, right under his ear. Zevran's sweat is stringent, with a deeper, musky aftertaste.

"Nothing like a hex from red lyrium to lower the inhibitions, no?" Zevran says. His usual teasing tone is tempered by hush and quick breaths against Nathaniel's neck, against Nathaniel's damp hair that's come part-unbraided.

Nathaniel laughs, hoarse. “We looked like drunkards.”

He recalls the nauseating, heady sensation of tautness at his scalp when Meredith stunned them. He lost the ability even to swear as his arrows collapsed to the ground and he struggled not to join them. Swaying, fighting the spell, gritting teeth that would barely clench. Then, release in one sudden lurch, at Hawke's shriek of frustrated rage and blast of chain lightning at the possessed knight. Nathaniel remembers trying to regain his footing, and any clear shot, through the mess of abominations and living statues swarming in the darkness.

Zevran sucks on Nathaniel's adam's apple, then tongues down into the dip of his throat, rumbling a pleased sound that Nathaniel feels vibrate through his body. Zevran's hand tugs against Nathaniel's hip, not enough to force him to move, but enough to encourage him. Nathaniel is encouraged. He thrusts against Zevran again, and they kiss again, tongues slipping, darting back, then slick against each other's once more. Zevran is almost painfully hard, a nearly bruising feeling against Nathaniel's thigh.

Everything seems all at once more urgent. Nathaniel's leg muscles quiver just a little.

"I wish to—" Nathaniel mutters.

Zevran says, "Yes, take what you need," voice low, eyes bright, so dark in this light.

“Zevran, I need nothing, I need not if you—”

“Shh, then take what you want. I'm game for it.”

Nathaniel lets out a low growl and ruts more quickly, with more pressure. His own heartbeat foggily pounds in his own head like the sound of wet dough being peeled off sanded wood. It feels like Zevran is everywhere. Zevran's tense stomach muscles. Zevran's smooth chin scuffed darker from Nathaniel's grating stubble. Every erratic thrust expands an upwards swell in Nathaniel's body, as Zevran traces the muscle of the back of Nathaniel's thighs with precise fingertips, and breathes hot and wet in his ear. Zevran works his way to a point on Nathaniel's neck just below the most sensitive place, and then circles his mouth upward, moving in for the kill. He sucks firmly and with a little teeth, and pressure grows, and Nathaniel comes, in what feels like a sudden breaking.

He lets out a low sound and Zevran lets out a satisfied laugh. The front of Nathaniel's trousers are wet and hot, and will soon be cool and uncomfortable. He doesn't care.

When Nathaniel recovers his breath, he says, "Would it please you if I...?"

He pushes back with one hand on the wall behind Zevran, and gestures to Zevran's erection, still pinned by smalls but visible enough through flaps of armor. Though Nathaniel has no real experience with men, he has hands and a mouth, and surely those would be suitable given enough persistence.

Zevran smiles but waves dismissively and presses a flat palm against his own cock. He turns away from Nathaniel so Nathaniel can no longer see his expression, just the curve of his shoulder, his arched neck, his golden hair.

"Later, my dear Warden, later,” Zevran says, low and light. “I think I prefer to ride the high of the battle a little longer.”

The Kirkwall fight? Or Nathaniel's own undignified grunting in Zevran's ear, struggling to his climax? Nathaniel accepts the simpler conversation.

"I find your aid to Kirkwall admirable," Nathaniel says, as they begin to meander out of the city toward the docks.

Zevran merely looks uncomfortable. "Admirable deeds are another phrase for reckless, no? Still, Hawke needed a little extra help. Isabela is talented, but she is no former Crow. As for you, _compañero_ , your technique with a bow is excellent. Trainers could not hope to instill those instincts in you. You have a gift."

Nathaniel shrugs, his knees still a little weak, his face still hot, as they descend steps and the smell of port reaches his nostrils. "I have immeasurable practice. Of late, against Templars, it seems. I am experienced in hunting, too, though never for sport. I discovered during my times as disgraced squire that one must occasionally end life to live."

"Ah, yes, I have lived that way for many years."

Nathaniel nods, and says carefully, "As I have heard."

"Ah, and what do you think of what you have heard?"

Zevran is flirtatious again, but Nathaniel says, solemn, "I would begrudge you nothing."

Zevran smiles at him, his skin darker in the dim light, his eyes sparkling with the echo of the lightly cresting shore waves.

"Now,” Zevran says, “Let us find our Warden."

 

When the adrenaline wears off, Nathaniel shakes until sleep, to the nauseating sway of boat on the water. The soreness of Zevran's kiss lingers on his throat. The memory of unfinished, half-joking encounters with stable boys in his youth, and the memory of Zevran hard against him, pulse in his mind on a loop, until he feels sick.

***

Only a little after dusk, Mukarukan sweeps some uncooperative crumbles of sunbaked deep mushroom into a pile on Shianni's floorboards.

With no warning, tree limbs plummet down from the ceiling, and roots with glistening knife-points of sap jut through the floor, nearly embedding behind her knee.

Mukarukan drops the broom and unfastens her staff from her back quickly enough to stumble out of the way of another upshoot. A scream not her own pierces through the house.

Mukarukan casts a Fade shield and takes only a blink to adjust to the disorientation of feeling like some parts of her, perhaps her right foot, left shoulder, the back of her neck, are being pulled into dreams.

Then she yells, “Velanna, what's wrong with you?” because this is Keeper magic, and it sure as the Black City isn't any aura except Velanna's.

Velanna swings open the front door and blasts Mukarukan with a misdirection hex that makes Mukarukan dry heave, eyes seeing points of light as she wills through it.

“What's happening to you?” she tries again.

Velanna only raises her staff again, her face a contortion of rage and tears.

Mukarukan swears, “ _Vashedan_ ,”14 under her breath, and shapeshifts into her cloud of hornets to wait, flitting near the top of the low, wood ceilings, dodging a fire blast with many tiny wings.

“You brought this on yourself, _shem'len_!” 15 Velanna shrieks out. Her voice cracks into a sob.

Mukarukan is so startled at Velanna's choice of word that she drops out of her form change with a tug behind her navel.

“I'm an _elf_ , Velanna, are you possessed?” Mukarukan stands, and quickly reignites her shields, but does not seek an offensive.

 _Maldición_ , she always forgets how terrible her nature resistance is. All this fighting warriors and demons, but Velanna promptly sets twists of vines around Mukarukan, and she's trapped, bound tight mid-air.

“You are a quickened child, aren't you?” Velanna spits out. “Don't think it's accurate, demon- _shem_? You're going to wander away and die early to the darkspawn, just as you've doomed me to! Human quickness wasn't enough! You had to spread your Warden's poison too!”

Mukarukan feels like she might be sick, and not from the binds or the battling. “You wanted to be a Warden, Velanna,” she says, but thinks of Jory, and feels even more disgusting. “I just—please. I'm sorry. I love our people more than I—”

“You're one of my people, are you?” Velanna roughly snorts in her own tears and stops attacking, but doesn't loosen the bonds. “What I see is that you're trying to free darkspawn when your supposed _own people_ are suffering.”

Mukarukan shakes her head in disbelief, one of the few gestures allowed by the vines. “I can care about everyone at once, Velanna, I don't know why—“

“Insipid. The Wardens were always meant to be human. Now I see why, pretender, now that you've put this in my blood and brought your poison to the Alienage, too.”

The back of Mukarukan's neck prickles like chilled pins. Velanna's not talking about the Joining.

“What do you mean?” Mukarukan says in slow, deliberate words.

The vines unravel suddenly with a sigh from Velanna, and Mukarukan drops to the floor with a grunt. She stands and shakes out her throbbing ankle with a few kicks at the air.

“There has been illness in three houses today,” Velanna says.

Mukarukan shakes her head, still uncertain. There is always illness in the Alienage. She treats it as best she can. Velanna helps more than Mukarukan, because she hasn't let humans rip away her ancestors' healing knowledge. But disease is always there. Part of life is sickness, part of colonized life more so.

Mukarukan, tentative, asks, “Did someone you love pass?”

“Four children died of the Taint this evening!” Velanna screams, a hoarse sudden sound.

“ _What_?”

“You've been asking for elves' blessings to keep darkspawn in their midst. So tell me, what kind of sick game is this? Are you hoping to create more Wardens for your bloodletting cause? Are you using children because everyone knows Alienage babes already die of fever anyway? Hoping they'll be of enough use before they slip away to the Beyond, leaving no evidence?”

“What?” Mukarukan squeezes her fist around her staff, not for casting but for the thrum of reassurance in the old wood. The staff was freely given by the elder tree in the Brecilian Forest, in thanks for returning its acorn, its future. The staff is her only tangible reminder that those happenings weren't a stranger's three lifetimes ago. “This can't... I don't know what's happening Velanna, but we need to find out who's behind this. I'm always careful to avoid contamination. You are too, I know you are. This has to be something else.”

From a distance, she hears Cokí's howling drawing nearer.

Velanna's eyes are downcast and her pale face is inflamed red from crying, but when Mukarukan leans her body forward, wanting to comfort, Velanna snaps her staff out again and stonefists the cast iron pot from the top of Shianni's mantle. Without her shielded aura and without Zevran's tutoring on how to duck objects without collapsing prone, Mukarukan is sure it would have hit her stomach and winded her to the ground.

Mukarukan begs now, her voice rising shrill too. “Velanna, I'd want to kill me too, but you served with me for long enough, you have to remember that I—“

Cokí barks, incessant, as he plunges through the threshold and sets up a fur-raised, teeth-bared stance in front of Mukarukan. Shianni sprints into the room, too, breathless and gasping. She purveys the damage to her house, then wastes no time. Shianni envelopes her arms around Velanna.

Velanna quiets, face hidden against Shianni's neck, but her shoulders shake violently, and her hands tremble and flex in the air instead of grasping at Shianni.

Shianni says, “Mukarukan, I think you should leave.”

Her face is filled only with sorrow. Mukarukan knows Shianni's right. She can't stay here.

 

Mukarukan looks at the children's already-bloating corpses the next morning, before their burning. Velanna is right about the Taint.

She leaves some money for each of the families, then slips out of the Alienage.

 

An elf child running messages finds Mukarukan a few days later. The letter is from Shianni.

Velanna has gone to the Deep Roads, alone, and no one knows where to find her.

***

_The old men, hanged by golden nooses from an upside down sea in the sky, infiltrate your own dreams, where you're searching in the rotting cupboards for a child who's disappeared. The disruption pushes you to lucidity. The men are all dead, but some of their toes still twitch. Nathaniel kneels on the ground, back stiff like a perfect soldier's posture._

_You've missed him._

_“The Couslands killed my grandfather,” he says, as if to explain._

_You count because you can, then say, in a very soft voice, “All twelve of your grandfathers?”_

_The illogic is not enough to wake him. He says nothing. You sigh, and rest a hand on his shoulder. He's gotten in your cupboards now, too, because dresses upon dresses not your own hang there, burning._

_“Father fears I may try to wear them,” Nathaniel says. “Unmarried noblemen do those kinds of things.”_

_“Doesn't Delilah need them?”_

_“No,” Nathaniel says._

_The Saw Sword screeches against a bed frame. You wince, and decide._

_“Wake up, Nathaniel,” you say._

_He finally looks at you._

_“You're dreaming,” you say._

_He disappears._

_His dream goes too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  10 “What happened?” (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  11 "Snot" (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  12 “My owl in the hurricane” (mix of Taíno and “Antivan”/Spanish); in reference to the origin of Mukarukan's name   
>    
>  13 Literally “ragged son of something”; “Yes, my ragged nobleman” (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  14 “Crap” (Qunlat)   
>    
>  15 Literally “quickened child”; derogatory term for non-elves, especially humans (Elvish)


	5. Chapter 5

_A stinking pool of blood that never washes away. A dead rabid dog. A blind Templar. A haunted orphanage. Blood, dog, Templar, ghost. They're important somehow, you have to remember them._

_You find two maps of charred parchment, a rodent's nibbles marring the edges. One map leads to death. The other leads to the destruction of your people. But there are no words or lines still legible, or perhaps you've simply forgotten how to read, and you don't know which is which._

_Velanna could tell you. But Velanna is gone._

***

Two Wardens, a darkspawn, and a mabari walk into the Deep Roads.

Surely Zevran could make some joke of that. Mukarukan wishes he were with her. As it is, the Architect as a traveling companion, rather than mysterious, fleeting friend or foe, is strangely awkward as he drift-walks alongside her.

With a careful prod of her mind that set pin-sharp pricks in her closed eyes, and radiated to an ache across her forehead, Mukarukan had reached for the Taint inside herself, and looked for the Architect, hoping the letters she sent actually reached him, and weren't destroyed by terrified messengers instead. Sure enough, she found him. He agreed to help, too, given the circumstances.

Mukarukan had a feeling she knew who Velanna would seek in the Roads.

Perhaps Mukarukan is a little irritable at the ache in her head and ankles, or merely at the Architect's less-than-moral original plans to free his people via changing everyone to ghouls. Regardless, Mukarukan's voice is less than calm when she asks, “I assume you have a similar connection to Seranni as you've opened with me? After you kidnapped her and exposed her to the Taint and all?”

The Architect says nothing, but keeps up their pace. This crumbling section of the Deep Roads has been passed time and time again after Branka breached it.

“How do you drink if your chest's just open like that?” Oghren asks the Architect, whose swollen gray lips downturn a little more as he sidesteps getting poked in a golden exposed rib.

“Seranni, in her youth, would hide underneath bear skins,” the Architect says. “She preferred caves to her people's open air.”

“Fine, be cryptic.” Oghren rolls his eyes, burps, and begins a one-sided conversation with Cokí about the pros and cons of pickled nug.

But Mukarukan listens more carefully to the Architect. “Go on.”

“I know this,” the Architect says, and he speaks with great care, “because she wished me to. Because she wished to be here with me.”

Mukarukan raises her eyebrows. “It doesn't count if you kidnapped her first.”

“I did not!” the Architect says, finally angry. “She sought me out of her free will. She told me the Dalish and my people were not so different. I... cared for her.”

 

Each darkspawn encampment they come upon, deeper in the Roads, Mukarukan crouches along walls in shadows, while Cokí and Oghren leap between darkspawn to give them little scratches for easier delivery of the cure, and the Architect awakens his people with the dwindling vials of Warden blood. Any who move past confusion to attack the Architect, Mukarukan stuns. The Architect talks to the dazed new Disciples. He promises to return to them to gather them soon.

 

“That's not the story I've heard," Mukarukan says. "If you cared for her, why did you let her be Tainted?”

The Architect shakes his head. “I hoped to cure her.”

“And did you?” Mukarukan asks, thinking of Seranni's ghoul-like features but no craving for flesh.

“No,” he says. “Some cannot be saved.”

“But she lives?”

“For now.”

***

Velanna sits at Seranni's side as if not in the winding passages of the Deep Roads. She's armed only with her Keeper's staff, and looks unperturbed, chewing on a stick of spiced sweet bark.

“Welcome, Warden,” Velanna says, and the illusion of nonchalance fades. “Welcome to my family gathering.” Her voice is hoarse with dehydration, and sarcastic. Seranni, next to her, is dying of the Taint.

Who isn't, these days?

“Shit,” Oghren mutters. “She doesn't look so hot. Got spells for that, Commander?”

Mukarukan hums a low unanswer, but the Architect says, “No,” for her.

“Sister,” Seranni says to Velanna. “They came as I thought they would. One of them can carry me. Help me.”

Mukarukan approaches a little closer. “Where does she need to go? Are you injured?”

Velanna ignores her, and says, instead, to Oghren, “Seranni says she wishes to die without daylight. Do you know what she could mean, dwarf?”

“No clue,” Oghren says. “There's no sun this far in the Roads anyway, what does it matter?”

“I know the way,” Seranni moans. “Please.”

“I will carry her,” the Architect says, and whispers to Seranni as he hoists her into his arms, as if her twitching, decaying body were an infant. Seranni smiles and closes her eyes, nestling her face against his shoulder strappings.

“What about you, darkspawn?” Velanna asks the Architect. “What does she speak of?”

“I cannot be certain.”

But as they travel, a slow funeral party as Seranni clings to the last of her life, and they head in the direction she demands, Mukarukan, who's never had any sense of direction, starts to feel eased. The pathways through caverns—bizarrely empty, now that Seranni is with them—seem familiar, necessary, comforting like pulling off boots at the end of a long day, warming like Zevran humming against her neck. She can almost hear music.

The cramped, dark tunnels of the Roads soon lead to an open cave mouth. Seranni sobs, thrashing in the Architect's arms.

“Seranni!” Velanna grips one of her sister's clenching hands, Velanna's already pale face gone gray. “What is it?”

The others crowd around Seranni too, as the Architect tightens his hold on her.

“I know,” Seranni whines, in between gasping breaths. “Shh. You, quiet. Quiet. I know. I know. Shh. Defiler. I am your child. Yes, with stars. Shh.”

“What the hell?” Oghren says, and Cokí crouches, tail between legs, a shrieking high whine in the back of his throat.

“Hold me in your wings,” Seranni groans out.

Wings. With a jolt up Mukarukan's spine, Mukarukan swallows the feeling of rise in her throat, and steps, trembling, to the cave mouth. She looks in.

Across a plummeting chasm, on a bed of broken rocks, an enormous dragon sleeps.

“Go go go go, no place, no place,” Seranni says, voice a liquid croak of distress as Velanna takes Seranni out of the Architect's arms, and props her against a wall, trying frantically to soothe her.

“Without daylight,” the Architect breathes, gliding to stand by Mukarukan. “Lusacan.”

“Oh _fuck_.” Mukarukan's body jerks in a sudden dry heave that she stifles, and she stumbles back, not caring that she nearly topples into the rest of those behind her. They're all Tainted, every single one of them, right down to Cokí by now after so many battle wounds, unofficial Warden as he is. This isn't how Mukarukan wanted to be remembered in texts of history—having started the Sixth Blight with the Dragon of Night.

The dragon, the Old God, is deep purple and empty-sky black, like a bruise. Spikes shield its giant closed eyelid, visible even from this distance. The muscles of its curled front legs gleam like polished metal, and its closed wings are like veiny sails of a ship, with the illusion of papery delicacy. Its tail spikes are a mass of brambles, the lashed stinger on the end like a curved greatsword. Mukarukan has never seen one alive and sleeping before. Only roaring, raging, massacring all her armies, or dead flesh next to Alistair's cooling body.

“Lusa-who?” Oghren asks. “Is that—“

“Yes,” Mukarukan says. “If we wake it up—“

Her fear bottoms out into rage. She doesn't want to risk power ripples from magic, so when she spins on the Architect, she grabs a side of his face's flesh with her fist and fingernails instead. If he knew, if he knew the risk and didn't say, just so he could find out where one of the two remaining dragons lies—

“Did you know this is where she was taking us?” she demands.

He stays very still, and looks at her. Seranni still mutters aloud. Cokí has begun licking Mukarukan's unoccupied hand, still whining.

“Did you not know?” the Architect responds. “Warden-Commanders are shown these places on maps.”

It's answer enough. Mukarukan doesn't know what else to do but let go of his face and hit him across the cheek. He only blinks.

Mukarukan stares at her stinging hand, then says, “They never showed me such things.”

“They do not trust you, then, for what you are,” the Architect says simply. “When one of our own is this close to death, the psychic channel grows stronger. We need this information. I will not make the same mistake as—“

“As when you started the Fifth Blight and murdered thousands upon thousands of—“

“Hey!” Velanna yells. “Will you both shut your self-righteous mouths and help my sister?”

Mukarukan flinches, and glances back to the dragon to ensure it's still sleeping.

“Close enough to night,” Seranni says, “Sister, the other elf...”

Velanna looks at Mukarukan with a frown, and Mukarukan steps closer to Seranni, squatting down beside her. “What do you need?” Mukarukan asks.

With breath that smells like rancid goat's milk, cuts and peeling around all corners of her paling lips, Seranni pulls Mukarukan closer and says, “Remember where he lives. You'll be back soon.”

“Do you prophesize, Seranni?” Mukarukan asks, quiet despite the pulsing acid storm in her stomach. She sends a careful, spatially contained seep of healing magic into Seranni's broken, rotting fingernails, to numb some of her pain.

Seranni only turns to Velanna, who sends equally contained healing into her sister. Velanna understands the risk too.

“ _Da'mi_ ,16 Lanna, please, do it,” Seranni says.

“Seranni,” Velanna says, and tears abruptly swell in her eyes and run down her cheeks.

“Velanna,” Mukarukan murmurs, “if you have need—” as the Architect begins to say, “I will—”

“Don't you dare touch her,” Velanna says, and kisses her sister on the tip of the nose. “ _Ma'arlath_ ,17 Seranni. _Dar’eth shiral, arla ven tu vir mahvir melana ‘nehn, enasal ir sa lethalin_.” 18

Seranni curls into a ball, her head in Velanna's lap. Velanna looks to Mukarukan with glazed eyes, and Mukarukan pulls a dagger from her pack.

The stench of the air turns sharp at Seranni's death, then fades. Mukarukan stands helplessly as Velanna says rites in Elvish for her sister, words that should not be spoken only by one lone elf for one of their kin, but by many. But Mukarukan does not know the words. Velanna throws the bloodied knife into the pit, deep enough to make no sound. The dragon across the way still sleeps.

“We will speak again soon,” the Architect says to Mukarukan after bowing before Seranni's corpse during Velanna's words. He drifts away from them and the dragon.

Velanna weeps against Seranni's forehead for a while, but when she stands and her face raises up, it is a mask of pale anger.

“She liked the dark. When she was little, she hid in bearskins like a cave,” Velanna says, and flicks a glance at Mukarukan then away. “Call on me at Shianni's if you need a half-decent mage.”

Without Seranni's influence for protection, Velanna takes Cokí at her side to venture out of the Deep Roads the nearest direction to Denerim. Oghren, quiet, and Mukarukan, leave for the Orzammar exit. When they enter upwards into the relative light of the still-underground dwarven city, Oghren clears his throat.

“All this darkspawn shit reminds me,” Oghren announces. “Wanna come with me to talk to _my_ spawn?”

***

As it turns out, Felsi is exhausted and grateful for some free babysitting, even from a “no good shitstain nug's foot” and his elven surfacer friend. She eyes Mukarukan's mage staff suspiciously, but then shrugs and runs off to her errands.

“Hey kid,” Oghren says, and pats the wide-eyed dwarven boy on the shoulder.

The toddler immediately topples onto his rear end and starts bawling.

“Well fuck,” Oghren says and rights the child.

Oghren's son blubbers for a moment, then sniffs and says, “Who you?”

“I'm your other momma,” Oghren says.

“Momma, not daddy?”

“You ever seen a dwarven _man_ with a beard this luxurious?”

The child shakes his head.

“Well, see!” Oghren says, satisfied. “Momma.”

“Okay, Momma.”

Mukarukan smiles and steps away, browsing around the house to give them some time to themselves. She looks at shelves of wooden bowls, and at a child's crooked portrait of a nug with a foot larger than its head, scribbled in charcoal on a low corner of the wall.

She wanders back in time to see Oghren sharing a drink with the child from his hip flask, which usually contains the most atrocious combinations of cheap and potent alcohols that Zevran mock-gags at whenever he witnesses Oghren take a swig. The child grips the flask in tiny fingers, about to raise it to his mouth.

“Oghren, you can't give a child that!” Mukarukan starts forward and the boy stops before taking a drink.

Oghren sighs. “Commander, if you _really_ feel the need, go ahead and sniff.”

She takes the flask from the confused child, and sniffs it tentatively.

Tomato juice. Mukarukan blushes hard, and hands the flask back to the child. “Um. Never mind. That was uncalled for. I'm sorry, Oghren.”

“Hey.” Oghren shrugs. “Yer bossy at heart, what can ya say?”

The child slurps on his juice for a moment, then points at the still embarrassed Mukarukan. “Who that?”

“That is a _scaaaary_ sorcerer lady.”

“Like Dawinter?” the child asks.

“No,” Mukarukan says firmly, glaring at Oghren for his summary of her. “Not like Tevinter.”

“Take my _blooooood_?” The poor child is very concerned, eyes huge, mouth trembling.

“Nah,” Oghren says, and musses the boy's hair. “She's spooky but she's okay. She can turn into a bear!”

This is how Mukarukan spends an entire afternoon being yelled “Bear, bear, bear, bear, bear!” at during completely unnecessary shapeshifting.

 

When Felsi returns, Oghren promises another visit to the sleepy toddler, then Mukarukan and Oghren begin a trek back to the surface.

“La dee da,” Oghren teases. “I'm the Commander and I love taking juice from kids.”

Mukarukan groans. “I know. Go ahead. I deserve it.”

“Nah, we're good,” Oghren says. “Just... tell me somethin'. And be honest.”

She nods. “I will.”

“Do you think I'm decent at the kid stuff? I can split somebody's skull in half, naked, blindfolded, and hungover. My fighting's up to par. It's just that, uh. What do you think? Am I hopeless at the rest, or...?” Oghren looks embarrassed and agitated.

Mukarukan stops walking, and turns to him, her expression pained, remorseful. “No, _no_. I don't think you're hopeless at all. I'm so sorry that the flask—”

“It's not just that.” Oghren waves a hand in the air. “I've been thinking about this a lot. Come on, hit me with some honesty here.”

“I mean it. Oghren, you're wonderful,” Mukarukan says. “You're wonderful with Cokí, you were wonderful with Delilah, and you're going to be a wonderful mother to your child. I value you as a Warden and warrior, but also as a friend. You—”

“Hey,” Oghren interrupts. “Don't start a touchy-feely speech, I only asked a question.” But Oghren looks redder than usual. “Uh, can I ask you something else?”

“Of course.”

“I'm with you to the end, but for the in-betweens, I, uh, I was thinking about staying in Dust Town. I'll be closer to Felsi and the kid, and there's a lot of casteless pregnancy, babies getting dumped, that kind of thing. I was, uh, thinking about being a midwife there, helping out, telling the other castes to fuck off, getting their kids healthy? But if it's not something that's any good for the Wardens, I can, uh—“

“Oghren,” Mukarukan breathes. “I think that's an amazing idea. Yes. Yes, absolutely.”

Oghren grins. “Ya like it?”

***

When Mukarukan meets Cokí in the outskirts of Denerim, she finds herself face to face with palace guards. Mukarukan considers her options, then scratches Cokí on the head to dissuade his low growling, and tells him to wait.

“You've been making quite the scene,” Anora says when they're alone, though Mukarukan suspects there are archers in the wings of the room, and guards in the shadows of the walls.

The Queen of Ferelden stands with her arms crossed, pouting, her hair the same bun of blonde it was years ago, her face only a little older. Mukarukan feels almost like they're back in a room in Arl Eamon's Denerim estate, talking about the sweet but bumbling Theirin boys while Anora petitions her support for the throne and Mukarukan turns her down. Was that really so long ago?

Mukarukan waits.

“What you've been doing reflects badly on me,” Anora says.

“Anora, we're not friends,” Mukarukan says with a shrug.

“You saved me.”

“You were being imprisoned by a sadist. Of course I saved you.”

“I freed the Circle for you.”

“And? Now you want to undo it?”

“You think I'm a terrible queen. I know that. You never wanted me, you wanted Alistair to rule, so you could whisper your sweet nothings in his ear and make the real decisions for Ferelden.”

“Oh, you mean like you did with Cailan?”

“If I didn't know better I might claim you were a disloyal subject, conniving, seeking the throne.”

“If you need me to be your enemy to make yourself look good, all right.” Mukarukan shrugs again. “Believe me, at this point, it doesn't matter to me.”

“It's not that simple.”

“So, what? You want to have me executed instead?”

“Oh, would I do that?” Anora muses, rubbing at an invisible mark on her sleeve. "Like how you executed my father?”

Mukarukan pushes through the swoop of guilt in her stomach that reminds her of the promise she made to Anora to keep her father alive if she could. The promise she broke to keep Alistair from disappearing, more than out of any justifiable vengeance at Loghain's atrocities. She may have done a good thing, but she knows she did it for the wrong reasons.

She dismisses her thoughts, and tries for crass. “I killed a lot of people's fathers. Loghain didn't regret murder, why should I?”

“Because you were more moral than my father.”

Mukarukan raises her eyebrows high enough to hide them behind her fringe. “At least you admit it.”

Anora rolls her eyes. “Of course. But now, I've heard rumors of darkspawn collusion.”

“Have you?” Mukarukan asks, giving her no ground.

Anora flings her arms out in frustration. “You don't trust me. Still. You never trusted me. Eamon, that old man of the old human families of Ferelden, who believes in purity of blood, and kings on the throne? You trusted him, more than my _elf handmaiden_? He actually managed to convince you, of all people, that I'm a bitch, that I'm out for nobody but myself? Him, who didn't even think a woman like me was fit to be a ruler, much less _you_?”

“Anora, it's not like you're exceptionally terrible—"

"Oh, _thank_ you, Mukarukan, you're so kind."

"—but you're the status quo. You don't change anything. I can't support someone like that.”

Anora tilts her chin up higher. “And I can't have a dangerous subject like you while I'm trying to rebuild Ferelden, not tear it apart.”

Mukarukan thinks about the grayed, peeling skin of the elf children who succumbed to the Taint, and looks down, drawing blood with her teeth from the inside of her lip.

They're both silent for a little while.

“What would King Alistair have been like?” Anora muses. “Would that pretty hair have grayed early, I wonder? Cailan had a few grays I plucked, you know.” She sighs. “Maric's boys.”

“Anora,” Mukarukan warns.

“And now all this talk that you and Nate Howe of all people are getting close. You're just itching to get your hands on some royal lineage, aren't you?”

“Anora.”

“It's a wonder you haven't tried to seduce me, too. Word in Ferelden is you'd be game for it. You like your women too, don't you?”

“ _Stop_.”

“You will resign as Commander,” Anora says, and Mukarukan knows it's a royal command, not a conversation piece. “The Orlesians think you're insane. Ferelden doesn't want them here at all, not when there's no Blight to need Wardens, but we're inclined to agree with them about you. The Taint's gone to your head. The Blight just tore apart this country, and you're now siding with darkspawn.”

“The Wardens swore to end Blights, not destroy darkspawn," Mukarukan retorts. "You don't know anything about it.”

“My father died for your war!” Anora's voice cracks. “Don't presume to say anything about me or what I know!” She takes in a breath and lets it out. “Step down. Do something quiet for a change. You have your staff in too many battles, all of them set to implode. Resign, or I will be forced to assist you in doing so.”

Mukarukan's eyes sting, but she hasn't cried since Alistair made his sacrifice, and she's not about to start in front of Anora.

“We could end all Blights,” Mukarukan says, and her voice doesn't even sound like her own, but more dangerous, more strange. “Not just for a little while, and not just for Ferelden.”

“I have made my command.” Anora fixes her with with an intent stare. “I expect you to honor it, or face the consequences. Times have changed, Warden, I can no longer offer support and protection for your madness.”

Mukarukan scoffs. “Do you even care about helping people, or just about maintaining consistency, no matter how terrible it—“

“Of course I care!” Anora snaps, and Mukarukan sees the resemblance to Loghain for the first time, despite Anora's blonde hair, blue eyes, pale, flawless skin.

“You think it makes it better if they talk?” Anora continues. “They still have blood lust! They're still contaminated! They're a plague with legs, and you want them stumbling around deciding whether or not to kill people for fun?” Anora narrows her eyes, her voice quivering. “I do everything for the good of my subjects.” She visibly contains herself, then adds, more casually, “You don't know what it's like. You never got to be queen.”

“Your Majesty,” Mukarukan says coldly, “The Grey Wardens answer to no monarch. You talk of Maric but seem to forget history.”

Mukarukan is surprised when Anora leans in.

“Don't do this, Mukarukan,” Anora whispers. “You're one leap away from treason, and I can have you killed with one clap of my hands. You dare imply you'll rally your Wardens and coup? They're not even loyal to you anymore. The First Warden writes to me of the liability you've become. You've turned against everything the Wardens stood for. You accuse me of assuming I know what's best for Ferelden, but you assume you know what's best for her and all of Thedas too. I am no tyrant, Warden. Aren't you, if you wish to lead those who do not wish to follow you?” A slight pause. “You're even hurting your own people, their most innocent. Even their children.”

And then Mukarukan knows.

If she didn't have a strong-willed stomach, she would be sick all over Anora's pretty but practical satin shoes.

“You—“

“Whatever you're about to accuse me of," Anora says, "it would be wise to keep your mouth shut.”

“You planted the Taint into the Denerim Alienage.” Mukarukan's voice betrays her by gasping and shuddering despite her best efforts.

“You're a fool to think the darkspawn want anything more than to spread their poison and breed.”

“Anora, you actually mur—“

“You've done far worse than I to align yourself with them. _If_ I did anything you suggest, it would be sparse, it would be contained, and it would be damage control for your lies and entanglements. A means to a much-needed end.”

“Oh Creators.” Mukarukan inhales hard through her nose, dizziness threatening to subsume her. “What's to stop me from going and telling them right now?”

“Telling the elves?" Anora laughs. "What's stopping you? Besides my guards, you mean? Logic. You really want the Alienage to turn against me? What a war they would fight, locked up with no weapons. Would that really help your people? You know how rebellions end.”

Even without arming her staff, Mukarukan lets slip a spell blast, and three decorative vases shatter. Guards are at her in an instant, but Anora waves them off.

“No, no, let her be, she'll leave on her own.” Anora smiles a little. “I know you'd prefer Alistair to be here instead, but you'll have to make do with me.”

Mukarukan closes her eyes. “I'd prefer to blast that throne to shreds. I'd prefer to tear down this Creator-forsaken palace with my bare hands.”

“You're a woman,” Anora says. “It'll be hard to get what you want.”

Former Commander of the Grey, former Arlessa of Amaranthine, former Hero of Ferelden, leaves Anora's throne room with just her name and a sickness in her blood.

***

In the clanking of Amaranthine's port, Nathaniel and Zevran find Mukarukan waiting for them. Nathaniel stifles the urge to greet her immediately (and to get on solid land), and instead finishes up their fare business with the ship's captain.

When he finally walks down the dock to greet her, Nathaniel finds that his father's killer, Blight ender, Chantry critic, Qunari sympathizer, abomination slayer, dragon-bone-stomached healer, is curled as small as she can become in Zevran's lap as he sits against a wall, Cokí watching nearby.

At first, Nathaniel thinks Mukarukan is crying. But no, her eyes are as dry and blank as her face. It is Zevran whose eyes are wet, fiery, fiercely protective. Zevran murmurs to her so low Nathaniel couldn't hope to detect the words, despite his senses attuned from many days surviving and roaming in the Free Marches.

Nathaniel feels decidedly helpless, so he purchases a mug of clear, upstream water, and brings it to Zevran, who nods.

Out of habit, Nathaniel inclines himself in a near-bow. Then he leaves, for they have not asked Nathaniel to stay or involve himself further.

***

In the evening, in their usual tavern corner, Nathaniel delves into a detailed report of the situation in Kirkwall, mages and Templars in escalating chaos, as Mukarukan listens, rapt. Only the deepened shadow tinge under her eyes indicates anything of her mood before. Before Nathaniel can even begin to summarize the Meredith battle, Zevran interjects.

“And then everyone was demons,” Zevran states.

Nathaniel considers protesting, then thinks that Zevran is both accurate _and_ efficient. "That... that does in fact summarize it."

Mukarukan sighs. “Nathaniel, you're not out of Wardens' graces yet. The First Warden's the one who paid you to go to the Deep Roads, he'll want information. And shouldn't you report to the new Warden-Commander? They already appointed him.”

Nathaniel shakes his head. “I told you once that the darkspawn and everyone else can't simply go on fighting each other forever. I still believe this to be true, despite... setbacks. It was you I requested the Joining from, and—“

“No, listen, Nathaniel." Mukarukan holds up a hand. "You'll be labeled a deserter. And after Anders' selfish, unthinking..." Her face lights with the rage he saw when he first told her of the Kirkwall bombing. "They'll be policing deserters more efficiently. I want you to—“

“You are the Warden I remain loyal to,” Nathaniel finishes. “You'll find that while you have a history of changing my mind, no argument will sway me from this.” He tries to ignore the look of pride and approval in Zevran's expression, and to ignore the feeling of failing his family once again. _Former_ squire. _Former_ Warden. Nathaniel sets that aside. His circumstance is still not as painful as Mukarukan's, he is sure.

Mukarukan quirks her mouth in a little smile at him, though it does not fully reach her eyes. “Thank you, Nathaniel.” She looks away and swills her drink in her hand, apparently watching the liquid spin. “So, what's Champion Hawke like?” Mukarukan asks, still looking down.

"Oh, the usual,” Zevran says. “Beautiful, clever, can knock armed men onto their backs with a single telekinetic burst, smells like dead varterral, inseparable from rogues and other scum of Thedas... all the things I like in a woman. She has a terribly possessive and terribly depressing lover, however. We all have pain, good man! I too have spent a life in bondage, and not always the delightful kind.” He gives a lurid wink to Nathaniel. "Is it not nicer for all involved to repress it with sensual charm, not crinkled faces? Ah, but to be fair to him, he glimmers, even with little glowing butterflies around him when he's very angry. That may be his appeal.”

Nathaniel rolls his eyes and instead reports, “She defeated the Arishok in Qunari-accepted hand-to-hand combat. She was competent in the Deep Roads.”

Mukarukan nods. “Good. Good.”

“She thinks you're a 'goody two-shoes,'” Zevran informs her, and Mukarukan scoffs.

"Okay, let me get one thing cleared up, all right?” Mukarukan says. “Isabela, Hawke's friend? I met her for a moment, she taught Leliana some dueling technique, and tried to cheat us at cards.”

Zevran grins. “Ah yes, Bela _bella_. A pity you have never had the pleasure of a more _extended_ time in her company. Perhaps one day.”

“She was wearing trousers if I remember correctly." Mukarukan frowns. "But now, all I hear is that the Champion of Kirkwall's pirate friend never wears anything at all covering her rear. Some clothes on top, nothing but boots on the bottom. So does she, or doesn't she?”

"She does," Nathaniel says at the same time as Zevran says, "She doesn't."

"She doesn't like it getting around," Zevran insists. "She much prefers stories of enormous bosoms and bare bottoms. Surely you can honor that and affirm the tale."

***

“I was given to believe no one enters Qunari territory without conversion or death,” Nathaniel says, raising an eyebrow.

“Precisely, my dear deserter,” Zevran says, gesturing at the Seheron coastal cliff face. (He has taken to calling Nathaniel that, to Mukarukan's dismay and grudging amusement.) “Welcome to your new life in the Qun!”

Mukarukan ignores Zevran and says instead, “No _invaders_ enter Qunari territory without conversion or death. If we're respectful,” she raises her eyebrows at Zevran, “we'll be fine.”

She hated to make Nathaniel travel by boat again, but he insisted that he would be fine and that he needed to fulfill his duty to her, if not the Wardens. It took a significant amount of coin to gain admission onto a cargo ship willing to head to the conflicted territory of a Seheron port, but once there, it only took a little hiking through the heat and moisture to slip away from the magister-controlled city into the denser, more precarious, jagged elevation, near where the Qunari held a military fortress at Akhaaz, just as her information had told her, against the thrashing Ventosus Straits.

Mukarukan doesn't know why she thought her genius plan of arriving in Seheron and wandering around asking for “Sten” would somehow work, rather than merely bring her either to every Qunari warrior (and there's a lot of them), bring her suspicion and enemies, or both. She supposes if she were more like the Qunari, she wouldn't need her Sten, just a sten, but... she wants hers.

She tries a new tactic. Once they enter a mildly populated Qunari camp, she asks _a_ sten where she can find _the_ Sten who wields Asala and once traveled with the Beresaad in the lands of _basra_ for the previous Arishok. To be fair, more specifically, she says, “ _Kost, ataash Qunari. Beresaad Sten say Asala kas, ash nehraa Arishok kata, ebost Seheron. Kadan ash. Esaam?_ ” which she realizes roughly translates to, “Peace, glory to the Qunari. Military scout warrior with soul weapon, to seek for Arishok dead, return to Seheron. Person one cares about to seek. Can be found in?”

Well, she tried.

“ _Qalaba_ ,”19 the sten mutters, but inspects her and her companions, then to her great relief speaks back in Antivan. Thank Creators for geographical closeness and the blending of languages. “ _No existe_.” 20

“ _Por qué_ ,”21 her and Zevran both demand at the same time, though she is worried while Zevran sounds more annoyed.

“ _El sten que lleva Asala no existe. El Arishok existe_.” 22

“ _Sten está el Arishok nuevo_ ,”23 Mukarukan says, eyes growing wide.

“ _No_ ,” the sten not Sten says, “ _Arishok es Arishok_."

“ _Dónde está el Arishok?_ ”24 Zevran tries.

“ _Arishok está donde puede cumplir mejor su deber_.” 25

“ _Ay, Qunari, Qunari, Qunari_ ,” Zevran murmurs close enough to her ear for her to feel his breath and shiver a little and raise goose pimples down her right side. “ _Así son las cosas, no?_ ”26

Mukarukan bumps her head against Zevran's gently, then says, “ _Panahedan_ ,”27 to the sten, who nods.

Mukarukan rubs a palm on her forehead, under her fringe, and turns to poor, grim-looking Nathaniel, who's stayed patiently silent. “We might have better connections than I first thought. Well, if I know how to interpret Qunari-speak, which... I might not. I guess let's keep asking around for the location?”

Nathaniel says, “I do not wish to alarm you, but a group of them are talking about us.”

Zevran shakes his head. “The least of our concerns, five of them are attempting to flank us.”

“Don't resist,” Mukarukan orders.

“What?” Nathaniel says, sounding shocked. “But we have a good chance of escape if we can get out of this encampment and backtrack. There aren't many Qunari in this part of the—“

“I'd rather be a Qunari captive than a guest of honor on the Tevinter half of this island.”

Nathaniel shrugs. “As you wish, Commander.”

“You're sure?" Zevran asks. "Could we perhaps trip them a little? I've never seen a Qunari fall on his face before, it might—“ Zevran stops and sighs at Mukarukan's look. “Very well.” He plants both his feet with one hip cocked, and raises his hands in surrender.

When hands grab each of their wrists, take her staff, and bind their limbs, Mukarukan only smiles and says, “ _Ataash Qunari_.” 28

“ _Parshaara, saarebas_ ,”29 one of them hisses.

“Yet not Tevinter,” an eloquent voice, clearly practiced in Common, says. “No tricks? You will come with us, _bas_?” The voice sounds almost surprised.

“ _Shok ebasit hissra_ ,”30 Mukarukan replies, unable to stifle her little smile of confidence as the firm hands falter in strength for a moment.

“We will see.”

***

Zevran stands and peers up at the ceiling. “Do you suppose, if I stood on your shoulders, I could reach that skylight?”

“You're not standing on my shoulders,” Nathaniel says, on a cushion on the bare floor. “You don't think the Commander has everything under control?”

“Don't let her hear you call her Commander any longer,” Zevran reminds him. “And yes, yes, the last time she was captured, she escaped before I could complete my rescue plan, but it does not mean I cannot fret. She may trust anyone with a grumpy disposition and a dislike for magisters, but that does not mean I have to. She forgets Sten's Qunari friends have horns.”

“Cokí seems happy.” Nathaniel glances at the dog, who rubs his tongue-lolling face into the dish of spiced meats a Qunari provided him for his captivity. The strong smell is seeping through the small room. The two non-mabari were also offered food, but neither of them would be very good or long-living assassins if they accepted captors' dishes, no matter the confidence of one overly optimistic elf mage.

Zevran tries for a foothold on the smooth walls, then makes a noise of frustration and removes a lock picking kit from... somewhere. Nathaniel's not exactly sure. He thought they had been efficiently searched earlier. Zevran tries his hand at the complicated door lock with no luck.

“At least they have indoor plumbing,” Zevran muses, squinting and tapping at the lock. “And the Divine says Qunari are barbarians?”

***

“What is your purpose?” the interrogator, a horned woman introduced as Tamass'ra, asks from above her.

Mukarukan sits on the floor of an interrogation dungeon unlike any others she's seen or been a guest in. The walls and floor are a clean, smooth stone, with the House of Tides emblem and what she presumes to be written Qunlat quoting the Qun, though she can't read it, engraved into the walls. The ball of _qamek_ Tamass'ra placed in a central carved fissure in the floor is wispy, purple, and difficult to look at directly. There are other neatly arranged concave places on the ground, for purposes Mukarukan can only guess at. On the ceiling, grates allows light to stream in.

“To seek an audience with the Arishok, my _kadan_.” Mukarukan lifts her chin, and smiles at her interrogator.

A startled silence follows at Mukarukan daring to make such a claim, but then, voice firm, the interrogator corrects her. “No. I did not ask what your purpose is here. I will repeat. What is your purpose?”

Mukarukan presses her lips together, and tries to stay calm, to think of the truth gas, _qamek_ , she is inhaling as more a sacred drug to experience than a tool of intimidation. It pinches away at her control, and rather than fighting it, she tries to relax into its tugging on her mind. She takes a breath. “To end unjust suffering.”

“All _bas_ suffer. Who are you to determine what is just and unjust?”

She wants to explain, wants to be convincing about her causes, the complex dynamics behind them all, elves but not Orlesians, mages but not magisters, Disciples but not demons, Dusters but not Diamonds, even the Qunari themselves against those who call them oxmen, those who hate them. But instead, Mukarukan sees bloated infants' feet, smells them starting to ripen, sees Vigil's Keep crumbling, sees werewolves, sees lumped, contorting abominations, sees Seranni, sees a field of flourishing crops with dead farmers watering the ground, sees a merchant's daughter with a slit throat, sees Anora weeping and curled against her father like a child, sees Alistair, sword above his head, sees a dragon's thrashing tail and bellow of pain.

Sparks like torchlight obstructing her vision, Mukarukan instead finds herself saying, “I don't know. I'm no one. Sometimes I don't even know if I'm alive or dead or asleep or...”

She stops. Her dizziness turns to nausea, so she closes her mouth and clamps down her teeth against each other. The vapors make her forehead pulse. Her hands are floating.

“You claim Arishok as _kadan_ ,” the interrogator says, suddenly very gentle, squatting next to Mukarukan. “That is a dangerous claim if false. For the safety of the whole, are you willing to greet him not free, but as bound _saarebas_?”

“Yes.”

“Answer carefully. If he does not recognize you, you must succumb to the Qun or die. Or you may take your companions and leave now. Do you wish to leave instead?”

“No.” Mukarukan hopes she translated the right information from the sten, that her Sten is indeed the Arishok, or she'll have a serious problem on her hands.

Tamass'ra frowns and pushes the bowl of vapors closer to Mukarukan, who tilts her face toward it willingly, wanting to be respectful and wanting this to be over. The room sways side to side like a _hamaka_.

“Do you know his soul?” the interrogator asks.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“A sword.” Mukarukan coughs, unproductively.

“Its name?”

Her tongue feels swollen. “Asala,” she says.

The interrogator nods, and abruptly snuffs out the _qamek_ with a metal plate. “Welcome,” she says. “We rarely have visitors.”

***

As soon as Mukarukan's Formerly Sten sees her, at the steps up to a massive set of golden doors, he waves a hand for the heavy magic-suppressing collar to be removed.

It reminds Mukarukan of a bear trap, huge and weighty metal. It's a strange sensation, to have the Fade closed off even in the back of her mind, as if a thick curtain has been drawn.

“This one,” Not-Sten says, pointing to Cokí, who circles his legs, “will serve as _basvaarad_ 31 here for my _kadan_. She is welcome here. Her companions are welcome too.”

The guard takes off the collar. Mukarukan grimaces and rubs the places on her shoulders where the collar dug in, avoiding an impulse to test her regained magic by sparking a healing spell. Not-Sten understands, but she doesn't want to terrify the other Qunari, especially as they deal with the colonizing efforts from Tevinter.

Two white-barked trees curve on either side of the new Arishok, their willow moss swaying in the slight, hot wind. Cokí collapses onto his back under one of them, and rolls from side to side, panting happily.

Arishok's House of Tides armor suits him much better than the clunky metal gear Mukarukan bought for him back during the Blight, when he looked more like an uncomfortable, shuffling fortress than a dextrous warrior. His already dark skin has deepened its tone away from dreary, clouded Ferelden. His hair, stark white and in long, tight rows along his dark brown scalp, then pulled back at the base of his neck, is the same, only much longer now, down to below his shoulder blades.

Mukarukan smiles, a real one despite her still-prickling lungs. At her head quirk of question, he pulls her into a hug, which she returns with an enthusiastic squeeze.

“I missed you,” she whispers, clutching her arms around him with all her might. His hand rubs her upper back.

When they finally pull back from each other, just a little, the new Arishok explains to the befuddled guard that embracing is “practical to check for weapons and to offer the transfer of warmth.” Then he waves his hand. “Now, leave us, serve your duty elsewhere.”

The guard leaves.

“Sten, my ebullient Qunari friend!” Zevran exclaims, jovial, stepping forward too. Zevran looks as though he wants to attempt a hug too, before thinking better of it.

“Not Sten,” Not-Sten and Mukarukan say at the same time, hands still on each others' sides. Then Not-Sten, brows low and mouth frowning, nods, and lets her explain.

“He's Arishok now,” Mukarukan says.

“Sten was a title, not a name?” Nathaniel asks.

“Both,” Mukarukan says. “I'll explain it to you later.”

“Are you a convert?” Nathaniel asks Mukarukan, sounding genuinely curious.

Arishok answers instead. “No, she has far too much wasteful intercourse to be of the Qun.”

Mukarukan bursts into laughter, finally pulling back from Arishok to clutch her aching stomach from her gasping giddiness. She didn't know when she'd see him again. She even thought he might be dead, even with Asala in his possession. But now he's here, and it makes things better.

“Still,” Arishok continues, “she is open to the Qun, respectful, and that is... something. For an unenlightened _basra_.”

“My, you are the flatterer,” Zevran says.

“My _kadan_ does not take offense at my words, elf. Whatever claims you may have on her, do not presume to speak for her,” Arishok says. “She is _Basalit-an_.”

Mukarukan rolls her eyes at the two of them, and laughs. “Arishok, don't you mean _Saarebasalit-an_?” she teases.

“You are... _basvaarad_ to the magic you use. Be sure this continues.”

She nods, solemn again. “It will.”

Arishok glances at Cokí, then at the three non-mabari, and sighs. “I must not converse more without cause. Do you have matters for the Body? Our paths have reunited. Is it for a purpose?”

 

Zevran and Nathaniel are seen to quarters, as Cokí is seen to a special section of the fortress reserved for beasts of burden and war, as the Qunari find sleeping in rooms with animals filthy. Cokí seems thrilled to make new animal friends, so Mukarukan doesn't protest. Once she and Arishok are alone, they walk together along the walls of the fortress and speak, as the sky turns pinks and oranges from a dust storm brewing.

When Mukarukan describes her loss of titles, she pretends to be cheerful, but it is clear Arishok sees right through it.

He fixes her with a somber stare. “I know what it is like to have my path taken away, _kadan_. You must quest to retrieve your purpose, without these false names your _bas_ give out for coin or whim. That is a worthy goal.”

 

He doesn't so much as blink when she discusses the plan for awakening all the darkspawn. She's grateful for the refreshing difference from the genocidal urgings she usually encounters. Arishok nods. “It is a good plan,” he says. “Not wasteful.”

“They will, of course, be able to maintain their free will, and need not assist or follow me nor the Architect.”

Arishok makes a grumbling noise, but after this long of their friendship, does not complain.

“Some will seek purpose, however,” Mukarukan adds. “They have been so used to serving only a single voice through the Calling. If they so choose... this is where I may need your help.”

“Yes,” Arishok says immediately. “They are welcome to the Qun.”

“If they wish it.”

“If they wish it,” he agrees.

“There is a concern of their infected blood,” she begins. “The barriers on their mind will be gone, but the sickness of their bodies will remain until they die. They do not spread disease and famine simply by passing by, that's a fear-mongering Chantry myth, but they do pose a risk...”

Arishok gives her a dismissive wave. “We have means of preventing the spread of disease. You _bas_ who slay your ill like cattle, or trap them away from the whole." He shakes his head. "You cannot isolate a part of the self to heal it. The part falls away, and the whole suffers. Sickness is no concern to us.”

“Thank you,” Mukarukan says. She means it.

“You will need to assist us before I can recruit any aid you may need," Arishok instructs. "You must prove your devotion to the Qunari.”

“Oh.” She fails to keep her irrational hurt from her voice. It's not unreasonable if he doesn't trust her fully with his people, but she's touchy lately. Too much Anora for a lifetime.

“ _Parshaara_.” Arishok's voice is gentle. “You have already proven your devotion to Sten's task, and to... me.” He looks uncomfortable speaking of himself in such individual terms. “But you have complications, magic, and have not yet proven yourself to the whole. You must demonstrate your alliance, and then we can assist.”

Mukarukan nods. “Of course. I understand.”

“Very well,” Arishok says. “But you will not like what I ask.”

***

A soft shuffling is Nathaniel's only warning before the gentle sound on the wooden and bronze door, more a muffled brush of knuckles than knocking. He opens the door, unsure if he should be expecting a fight or a conversion, despite the hospitality they've thus far received, but instead finds Mukarukan, hair askew and in a comically oversized tunic with the Qunari House of Tides emblem dyed into the fibers, which she appears to be using as an nightdress instead.

Nathaniel knows his expression softens from expectant, determined defense when he sees her, and she smiles.

“So this is the room,” she says. “I wasn't sure.”

“Yes,” he says, and gestures for her to come in. Nathaniel ignores her bare legs. “Zevran's not back yet, he said he was going to find the bathing grounds.”

Mukarukan lets out a soft murmur of a laugh. “Of course he is.”

She looks absently around the room, as if there was much to look at. Qunari keep a sparse household. Nathaniel's already fond of the bare little room, with its barracks cots and plumbing. Given Akhaaz's precarious position as a settlement fortress, the Qunari had no individual rooms to offer them, but Nathaniel's starting to realize “individual” isn't much liked by Qunari in any case. The room, despite its size and lack of decoration, already has luxuries even his childhood home did not. The Qunari cleanse and heat rainwater, for instance, to allow it to flow from a tap like a wine barrel, then collect it again down drains. Nathaniel finds it fascinating.

Mukarukan turns to look at him. He wonders if she's going to ask him about Kirkwall and Zevran, while Zevran is away. He readies himself to tell the whole truth. Yes, after the heat of battle Nathaniel accepted his standing invitation, but—

“Nathaniel, we're still friends, aren't we?”

He wasn't expecting that one. He looks at her carefully, then says, with full honesty, “Yes. If you still desire it.”

“Yes,” Mukarukan says, sincerity in her breathlessness and her large, dark eyes. “We haven't had our long conversations much lately, but yes.”

“As you may have noticed, I don't find constant communication a requisite. I have been known to appreciate silence.”

It is then that, for a fleeting, insane moment, Nathaniel thinks Mukarukan is about to kiss him. They're both still standing. She sucks unflatteringly on her bottom lip, in a way that contorts her face, before she smiles like she's deeply embarrassed, and steps a little closer to him.

Nathaniel just holds himself still. She meets his eyes again.

“Your lover and I had a sexual encounter in Kirkwall,” he says suddenly.

She looks visibly more relaxed. “Zevran? I know.”

He nods. “I don't wish to keep anything from you.”

Mukarukan shakes her head, and sits cross-legged on the floor, tucking the tunic carefully around and between her legs. “That's been evident from the first day we met, hasn't it?”

He is grateful she does not press him about Zevran. He sits on the side of the cot he's claimed for himself, spacious considering he is average height for a human, not a Qunari. He considers offering her the space at his side, rather than the floor, but thinks better of it given the conversation's context.

Instead, he asks, “What is our plan for a Qunari alliance?”

Given her near-agitated delight at seeing her old friend again, Nathaniel is surprised when Mukarukan looks absolutely miserable, and much less comfortable, somehow, than talking about his intimate fumblings in a Kirkwall back alley.

“It went that well?” he says wryly.

Mukarukan lets out a massive but unexaggerated sigh. “Ste— _Arishok_ and I always have a little bit of a... bronto in the room, so to speak. He got past the whole 'woman fighting how does this work' issue, but this is more... I mean, it's not that the Qunari are worse than the Chantry, or even secular human rule, they're not, not by far, they're really wonderful with most things, but...”

“Magic?” Nathaniel guesses. After Kirkwall, the problem's always magic these days.

“Yes. They're not trying to lock me up or anything, contrary to popular belief they're not atrocious to respectful outsiders' cultural differences.” She frowns. “But there's something Arishok wants me... us, you, me, Zevran, puppy... to do. A test of loyalty to the Qun.” She sighs again. “One of their mages—they call those _saarebas_ , dangerous things—escaped.”

Nathaniel is starting to see her concerns. “And they wish you to deal with him?”

“Her,” Mukarukan corrects.

“There are magisters swarming all over Seheron. If she has power, surely she'd seek refuge from them?”

“Probably. That's half of what the Qunari request. Determine the depth of magister corruption.”

“If that's not the case, what are we expected to do? Return her here?”

“No. She killed her _arvaarad_ , their sort of mage's keeper. A personal Templar, maybe? The best way I can describe it. With her _arvaarad_ dead, the Qunari require death. The other half of the deal." Mukarukan rubs underneath one of her eyes with a thumb. "Oh Nathaniel. Is it terrible if I almost hope that she's a lost cause, that she's dabbled in awful, risky stuff, and is already an abomination, just so I can be done with it? So I won't lose my friend, this alliance, or my ethics?”

Nathaniel considers this. “It's not the most considerate thing you've ever expressed.”

Mukarukan lets out a short, bitter-sounding laugh. “I know.” She absently taps her fingers against her bare knee. “I wonder,” she muses. “Would it be worse to be chained, magic and dreams blocked away until use for them is needed, and be tugged around where somewhere else pleases, but in the fresh air, seeing the world? Or is the tower worse, lenient with magic but trapped in their damned stone walls? Stuck or death, stuck or Tranquility?” She lets out another laugh, this one even less happy than the last. “Or the other option, burn Thedas to a crisp with demonic magic, I suppose. It's not like people have no reason to fear us. It's not like we're powerless. Us mages aren't a simple problem.”

Nathaniel was bombarded with talk of the Circle so frequently from Anders that Nathaniel never had time to note the absence of such discussion from Mukarukan. He'd known she was Circle-raised, he supposes, knew she was not an apostate, but this is the first time she's ever mentioned it to him.

“It is not for me to say,” he says carefully. “I have heard Qunari and Circle mages alike possess their share of horrors. Do you wish to share anything about Ferelden's Circle?”

Mukarukan shrugs. “When some place is your home for so long, you don't know that there's anything to compare it to. I wouldn't have called it horrific at the time. I just... maybe wouldn't have lived much longer, either.”

Nathaniel's thoughts fly with memories, things Delilah had known he kept locked away. “I understand the sentiment.”

Mukarukan looks at him. “Yes. I know that you do.”

In a disorienting flash, Nathaniel remembers that she killed his father. Mukarukan killed his father. The thought happens upon him from time to time. It's strange. Almost unreal.

He doesn't know what else to say, so he turns the conversation back to her. “Does being in small spaces disturb you now?”

“Mm, not so much small,” she says, and itches her nose absently, looking around the narrow Qunari quarters. “Big is terrible too if I can't get out. It's all about knowing if there's a locked door, and if I have the key.”

***

For a culture supposedly absent of sex outside of reproduction, Mukarukan's Qun-driven friends know a delectable amount about sensual baths. Not in the assigned cleaning hour, Zevran finds himself alone with clean hot water and moody lighting.

And the Qun symbol too, jarring and imposing wherever Zevran looks, but it is Seheron, not heaven, so he will take what he can get.

After a languid bath, Zevran clicks open the door to their quarters to a perfectly framed scene of his Warden's hand on _her_ Warden's knee, as she sits along the floor. One of Nathaniel's large, graceful archer's hands rests against Mukarukan's wrist, and Nathaniel leans forward in her direction from his seat at the edge of a cot. Mukarukan, swimming in her Qunari shirt, looks up at Zevran and smiles, in a way that tells Zevran, grateful, Nathaniel has made her laugh. Good. She needs more humor in her life. Mukarukan knows Zevran well and does not bother to move her hand, but Nathaniel pulls back his own in a swift motion. A guilty conscience it seems. And for what reason? None whatsoever.

Mukarukan stands and goes to Zevran. Her fingers feel cool against his skin after the hot water. “Nathaniel was telling me about the first time he tried to shoe a horse,” she says.

“It did not go well,” Nathaniel agrees, and Zevran sees him give Mukarukan a flash of his lovely nobleman's teeth in a grin before pulling out a book and beginning to read.

Zevran tucks his head forward and Mukarukan meets his lips with hers, with a satisfied out-breath. She massages the backs of his thighs with outstretched hands, then massages his already bath-soothed muscles up higher, too. Zevran has half a mind to topple over, just to demonstrate how deliciously weak she makes him feel. Yet even with her ministrations, Zevran has not forgotten they have an audience, and the audience has not forgotten either.

“Do you require some time alone together?” Nathaniel asks, irritable.

Mukarukan opens her eyes, looking like an impulse apology is about to leave her lips, but Zevran turns his face a little from where it had been buried in the crook of Mukarukan's chin and collarbones.

Hmm, Zevran knows that look on Nathaniel's face. He saw it right before getting marvelously scuffed up by a hard bit of humping in Kirkwall's streets. Zevran flutters his eyelashes and unleashes a slow smile. “And what if we asked you to stay?” Zevran asks.

“In what capacity?” Nathaniel asks warily.

“Whatever you so desire,” Zevran says.

Mukarukan rolls her eyes, then says, matter-of-fact, to Nathaniel, "If you'd take pleasure in watching, you can." She smirks a little. "Zevran likes it when I put him on display. Or," she continues, "we can figure out other things we all might like." She shrugs then, and Zevran has to stifle a swell of affection in his chest from bursting him into laughter. Mukarukan's look is both sweet humility and pragmatism when she lays down her offer, but despite whatever she believes to the contrary, that makes her no less seductress.

Zevran sees Nathaniel's gaze stray to her lips.

“I don't think that wise,” Nathaniel says. “Not today.” He sets his book aside, stands up, and heads for the door. Mukarukan immediately goes to him.

"We won't do anything while you're here then, I swear it. You don't have to leave, this is your room too." Her eyes worry over his face. "Or would you like me to ask Arishok if there are other quarters we can borrow? You keep this one. We can--"

"No," Nathaniel says. "Thank you." Like the nobleman he was raised to be, a gesture that Zevran muses looks authentic only on those who were trained in it since birth, Nathaniel bows his head and raises Mukarukan's hands to his lips for the slightest brush of a kiss against her knuckles. Mukarukan looks confused, longing, bemused, fretting, all at once.

"Never fear, my lady," Nathaniel says, with an intentionally overdone grandness that sounds self-deprecating to Zevran's trained ears. "I need only some air. I will return safely."

Mukarukan nods, and Nathaniel walks out the door.

“He's experienced enough with women, you know," Zevran says when he's gone. Zevran keeps his voice light, joking. "I am the problem.”

Mukarukan sees past his tone in an instant, and turns back to him, frowning. “Zevran, but you and he—he and I haven't even—“

“Kirkwall was dark, we'd been through a battle, and I happened to be around. It is you he's been staring at. No doubt hating you first confuses him, or he would have already acted."

Mukarukan goes to Zevran, her brows furrowed, her eyes searching. "He cares for you, too. You don't see that?"

Zevran does not mean for this to escalate, means to put this aside and stop making her fret, but he cannot keep himself from speaking, the words pouring from his worthless mouth.

“It seems unlikely," Zevran says, and lets out an empty laugh. "I am not a good man. Would it not be a cruel twist of the universe that I should have not one, but two, who care for me? If I am being frank, which I believe you wish me to be…" Zevran pauses, then looks away from her face, and instead takes her hand in his. "In truth, it terrifies me. Would my _múkaro_ not be happier with this compassionate, clear-headed noble? A Warden just as she is?”

“Zevran,” she whispers, curling her fingers tighter around his.

“And I want _him_ , too,” Zevran continues, face twisting in shame. “I want him, yet I want him to be happy, and so I think to myself there is an excellent solution, and that is to step aside and stop complicating matters, leave and cherish what I have shared before I become selfish and greedy for those I do not deserve.”

“No,” Mukarukan says, “no, that's never what I—please don't—“

Zevran dares to look at her face, and sees no tears there, but the flush has left her cheeks, and she gasps in her breaths like the room has emptied of air. She pulls back, sits on a cot, closes her eyes, and takes a breath. She breathes again, the exhale echoing in her cupped palms, trembling over her mouth.

Mukarukan opens her eyes, and voice steadier, says, “I'm sorry. I still want you to do what's best for you. If you need to leave, then I—“

Zevran stares, stricken, at her reaction. He's never seen this from her before, this sheer panic instead of numb disconnection, distant sadness, or even righteous anger. And he has done this to her. Zevran shakes his head, and goes quickly to her, kneels at her feet, presses a hand to her face, more to ground the both of them than her alone. Mukarukan closes her eyes and turns her head a little, suckles at the center of his palm, kisses it, then ceases and only presses her face into his hand.

"I'm sorry," she repeats. "It's your choice, Zevran, always your choice."

“Listen to me," Zevran says, voice hoarse. "Don't fear, you cannot get rid of me so easily. These are things I think sometimes, but when have I ever been a saint to only do what's right?”

“But Zevran, you're good,” Mukarukan insists, opening her eyes and stroking a thumb against his jaw. “You're so, so good.”

Zevran shakes his head. “I have only really loved three people in my life. One begged me not to kill her on bended knee, and I did all the same. How do I know that I will not one day do the same again?”

“To me?”

“Yes.”

“No.” She is so confident, the word is almost a laugh.

“So certain?”

“You already tried to kill me once and that failed. I'm a mage, _mi amor_ , I always have the upper hand.”

Zevran laughs. “Well, that settles it, I suppose we're safe.”

She sniffs in a little, then after a little silence, still stroking his face, says, “Who's the third? Rinna, me, and who else? Taliesin?”

“No, certainly not.” There were many things there. Love was not one of them.

“Then...”

Zevran grimaces out a smile, then looks away, reminding himself to never underestimate Mukarukan's ability to catch onto exactly what he hopes she'll miss. “Did I say three? I meant two of course.”

A grin starts to break across Mukarukan's face. “You love him.”

Zevran narrows his eyes and thins his lips in displeasure, but does not respond otherwise.

“Zevran,” she says, and kisses him on the cheek. “You love _Nathanieeeeel_.”

Despite himself, Zevran laughs at her enthusiasm.

“Zevran, we can do this. This is going to be beautiful.”

“I am glad one of us has confidence in sentimentality,” Zevran grumbles.

***

Saarebas has last been seen—though not spoken to, for fear of magical contamination—by Qunari scouts in rainforest territory a considerable distance away from the fortress.

It is territory, Arishok explains, the Tevinter Imperium has claimed for itself, despite Qunari inscriptions in aged stone, and other significances Mukarukan cannot be told. It is sickening, though unsurprising, when Mukarukan hears of _why_ the Imperium disregards any contestations: because, they say, the Qunari did not _change_ the rainforest, did not drive out wildlife, utilized only existing natural structures, and so did not _truly_ claim it to begin with.

The Imperium values only manipulation, it seems, even of the land.

 

Mukarukan dresses for the occasion. She wears thick boots that reach above her knees, and robes that allow her better freedom of movement. A pair of light leather thigh guards borrowed from Zevran's stash serve to make up for her comparative exposure.

Mukarukan has never seen Cokí's eyes so big, as he pads over the slippery, foliage-strewn ground with her, Zevran, and Nathaniel. His ears and tail stump twitch every which way at the shrieks and warbles of birds, the chirping of frogs and insects, the rushing of water in the distance.

“I know,” Mukarukan coos to her hound, scratching his scruff with one hand, as she pushes aside green canopies with the other. “We're close to your ancestors' home, _mi amor_.”

“Mabari had the choice between magisters or snow,” Nathaniel muses. “It would not have been an easy decision.”

Cokí's entire rear end wiggles as he wags his tail and prances along, sniffing moss, vines, the trunks of trees.

“I am almost offended,” Zevran says. “He was not this happy in Antiva. What is wrong with my beautiful country, dog? It is warm there, too.”

Cokí lets out a sigh.

“Yes, I know,” Zevran concedes. “I did not take you into nature, just into the dirty streets.”

Suddenly, Cokí perks his ears up, then flattens them back again, a growl rumbling in his throat. A moment later, Mukarukan hears it too. A scream.

They pick up their pace through the rainforest, and emerge from the tangles of dense green to the source of the noise. A small waterfall gushes over slick rock in a clearing. At the base pool of the waterfall, an elf jerks and splashes to magical lightning sizzling through the water.

Mukarukan backtracks the charge with her gaze to a pair of dark gray hands. The lightning swirls up arms, a neck, all the way to the tips of curled horns. The mage woman wears ragged black trousers and a breast band that references the House of Tides symbol in color and designs, but this is no Qunari, not anymore. They have found their Saarebas.

As if on cue, a group of magisters attack.

When Saarebas attacks the magisters, not Mukarukan, she knows something's wrong. When the elf Mukarukan pulls out of the still unnaturally hot water calls her a knife-ear, throws curses at her in the name of the Imperium, and uses undertrained blood magic to try and murder all of them alongside the magisters, Mukarukan understands. The understanding tears at her stomach, makes her feel like laying down her staff and hiding in the dark somewhere for a long time.

When her own people turn against their own kind—first because they have to, to breathe another day, and later when they forget even that, forget what started them on the path away from themselves—it is a heaviness that Mukarukan can't easily push away.

“I was right to fight the elf,” Saarebas says, kneeling and looking at the ground as Mukarukan signals Zevran and Nathaniel to put away their weapons.

Despite Mukarukan's cruel hopes to the contrary, she is not really surprised to find herself on Saarebas' side.

Saarebas' Common is fluid and fluent, and Mukarukan realizes it is the glow around her that translates words between them.

Mukarukan sets her staff down and sits on the rocks in front of Saarebas, the waterfall still mimicking the sound of harsh winds beside them. “I see why you did so, yes.”

“But it pains you?”

“Yes, it does.” Mukarukan runs a finger along the tip of her own ear, then along her _vallas'lin_.

“By betraying one's own people, one is worse than the gravest enemy,” Saarebas mutters.

“I... don't agree,” Mukarukan says, though she keeps her voice soft. “An enemy causes suffering out of pleasure, or some kind of gain. A betrayer suffers, then creates suffering. It's not right, but—”

“No,” Saarebas growls out, and she snaps her head up to stare at Mukarukan with bloodshot, weary eyes. Mukarukan sees the paler scars on Saarebas' dark lips where her mouth must have once been sewn shut. “You expect an enemy. But a betrayer is a sheep who eats its kind the very night they feel safe from the wolves. An enemy has no trust to break. A betrayer is worse than that.”

Mukarukan doesn't have all the information to understand an entire layer of their conversation, she's sure. “Did you... do you think you betrayed your Qunari people?”

Saarebas looks at her as if considering her trustworthiness, then looks down again. “No. They betrayed me. My one who holds back evil...”

“Your _arvaarad_ ,” Mukarukan confirms, to make sure the magic translates what she thinks Saarebas means.

“Yes, my _arvaarad_.” Saarebas nods. “Most in the Qun see _saarebas_ with pity. Magic is to mage as the sea is to one drowning. We must be chained for the protection of all, yes, we are feared, yes, but we are not _hated_.”

Mukarukan remembers Sten, before he was Arishok, telling her something similar. She nods for Saarebas to continue.

“My _arvaarad_ hated me,” Saarebas says, low and enraged, her hands squeezing into fists that spit and crackle with power. “He was worse than _bas_ , worse even than those who call themselves Tal-Vashoth. He showed me his hate for me in many ways, and all these ways were against the Qun. But no others cared to find out, to stop him, for they forgot that the whole must protect all. Me, and those like me. We are part of all. Not only us, and no more than each other. But we who submit to the Qun to be used are not meant to be _destroyed_. We are not magisters. We are their _own_.”

The sunlight is so bright, the rainforest's noise so benign. “I'm sorry,” Mukarukan says, because she doesn't know what else she can say.

“I am not afraid to die for the Qun,” Saarebas continues, voice quavering. “But I will not die for frauds.”

“I think you're right,” Mukarukan says. “I don't think you should die.”

“I didn't ask what you think, _basra_ ,” Saarebas says.

Mukarukan smiles.

 

Saarebas heals herself to full health, and among Mukarukan's, Nathaniel's, and Zevran's packs, they find supplies, clothes, lyrium, and coin to give to her.

Zevran suggests the local witches of Rivain's remote regions might welcome her. Mukarukan suggests, at least, that Dalish clans she might encounter will hear her out and give her refuge, temporary though it might be. Tal-Vashoth bands are prolific across most of Thedas, but none of them encourage Saarebas to seek them out, for she looks murderous enough at their name alone. Unwilling Vashoth she might be, but Tal-Vashoth never, it seems.

For fear of _qamek_ , Mukarukan asks Saarebas not to reveal her planned route or goals to any of them.

Soon, Saarebas is long gone.

Mukarukan sits down on the ground again, and drapes her arm around Cokí. “Goodbye, Qunari alliance.”

“This is an exceptional circumstance,” Nathaniel says. “Surely they will see reason.”

“If you think so, then you do not know the Qunari, my friend,” Zevran says. “They do not make exceptions. Of course, Mukarukan could simply lie.” He sends a hopeful look to her.

She shakes her head, and Zevran sighs.

“I'll keep her as safe as I can," Mukarukan says. "I'll withhold information if I have to. But I don't lie to Qunari, and I definitely don't lie to Arishok.”

“If you think it's because of their truth gas, think again,” Zevran says dryly to Nathaniel. “Pure righteous right-doing.”

“It's called respect,” Nathaniel retorts.

“Absurd!” Zevran says, waving a hand. “It is entirely possible to lie and be respectful all at once. One must simply sound _polite_ while doing so.”

Mukarukan pushes her bangs out of her eyes and drums fingers against her forehead. “Damn it.” She breathes out through her mouth. “All right, let's get this over with." She stands. "Maybe I can salvage a friendship if nothing else. I mean, I can't see how Arishok _wouldn't_ expect this out of me. He knows me. Doesn't he?”

***

Zevran notes the slow, near-dragging way she hikes back to Akhaaz, quite a contrast from her energetic travels to bring Sten his old, beaten sword.

Sten—fine, Arishok, though Zevran doesn't particularly care—is waiting for them when they arrive. He has an equally tall Qunari woman with him, and they both seem angry, though who can tell these things with Qunari? The woman glares when they approach.

Mukarukan glances at her friend, then looks down and says, “Arishok, I have to tell you the truth. I—”

“Saarebas is dead," Arishok interrupts loudly. "Your duty is fulfilled.”

“Dead?” Mukarukan shakes her head, her eyebrows crinkling at once. “But—”

“ _Parshaara_ ,” Arishok says, and glares. “The Qunari will help your purpose. You are done here.”

“Excellent!” Zevran says. No need to ask questions, time to move on. “We will just—”

“Do you know that Saarebas was loyal to the Qun?" Mukarukan asks, anger in her voice. "Her _arvaarad_ exploited his power over her. He did not hold back evil, he created it! And now she's _dead_?”

“You will cease—” Arishok warns.

But Mukarukan is stubborn as ever, and while Zevran loves her for it, he thinks it may also get them killed one of these days.

“Arishok, please,” Mukarukan presses on. “You know better than most what it is like to be a weapon, even when weaponless. You've seen that mages aren't all lead by demons. You have to do _something_ about the imbalance of power the _arvaarads_ —”

In a move very quick for someone so hulking, Zevran barely blinks before Arishok is towering in full might over Mukarukan, very close to her, and looking very dangerous.

Zevran draws his daggers. He sees, from the side of his vision, that Nathaniel has notched an arrow into place in his bow, poised and ready. Cokí growls, hunkered down. The Qunari woman only observes. Mukarukan flinches but does not cower, though whether that is to her credit, or a mark of foolishness, Zevran does not know.

Arishok ignores the drawn weapons, and still stares at Mukarukan. There is nothing of the man Zevran has witnessed doing what could fairly be called _cuddling_ with his Warden in _this_ man's expression.

“Just because you speak a little Qunlat,” Arishok growls, “does not mean we will allow you to speak for Qunari. You disrespect us, _bas_.”

“ _Qalaba_ ,” the woman mutters at Mukarukan.

Now Arishok turns his head a little. “Tamass'ra,” Arishok warns.

But the woman draws herself up and gives him a stare not so different from the one he just gave Mukarukan. She says something to him in Qunlat that Zevran cannot understand. Arishok shakes his head, and paces away from Mukarukan.

“Tell me, _bas_ ,” Tamass'ra says to Mukarukan, approaching her, as Mukarukan raises her head up in staunch confidence. “Do you think we are savages in need of wisdom from _basra vashedan_ to show us our errors?”

A stain of a blush floods Mukarukan's cheeks, her face pained, and she opens her mouth as if to speak. Tamass'ra raises a palm, and Mukarukan closes her mouth again.

Tamass'ra's voice is fluid now, no longer enraged, but no less dangerous. “We have helped our own long before you ever met your _kadan_. Long before your feet ever touched the earth. Do you understand? _Maraas shokra_.” 32 She catches Mukarukan's gaze, and holds it, as if compelling her to read a thought Zevran cannot interpret. “ _Maraas shokra_ , do you understand?”

Mukarukan flushes even darker, as if in shame. She swallows visibly, and nods. “I'm sorry. I'm—I'm sorry. I understand.”

“Do you have proof our information is wrong?” Tamass'ra asks, sounding casual and musing now. “Proof Saarebas still lives? In _certainty_?”

Mukarukan tilts her head just a twitch, and Zevran sees her staring at the Qunari woman as if trying to unravel mysteries.

“No,” Mukarukan says finally. “I have no such proof.”

“Good,” Arishok says, turning back around to face them, voice still gruff but getting gentler. “Soldiers will be at your disposal. You are dismissed from here.”

“Thank you,” Mukarukan says, and Zevran stashes his daggers again as she turns away.

“ _Panahedan, kadan_ ,” Arishok calls after her.

Mukarukan stops and smiles, looking at her feet.

“Be safe, too, _kadan_ ,” she says.

 

"They're protecting her," Mukarukan says, her voice awe-struck, as they head to board a ship.

“'You do not know the Qunari, my friend, they do not make exceptions,'” Nathaniel quotes, glancing at Zevran, expression deadpan.

Zevran shrugs. “Mock if you wish. We know nothing. Perhaps they killed her. Perhaps she grew a pair of wings and flew away to Par Vollen. Who's to say? It is all cryptic implication with these Qunari. All we know for certain is that they claim they will help us, and that they do not like you, _querida_ , in their business.”

“They were right to be angry,” Mukarukan says. “I was wrong. It's not my place.”

“You are pretty enough to go _any_ place,” Zevran says, and Nathaniel barks out a laugh.

So near to Antiva already, they agree to go there next, because Mukarukan's mother was from there, and she has never been. Zevran suspects Mukarukan really wishes to help him kill some Crows too, but he is not opposed.

The ship is to Rialto Bay, not far from land, when the attack comes.

***

The other, quiet passengers, who kept to themselves, are not Qunari as the ship's captain had believed when he informed Mukarukan who their company would be on the voyage. They are Tal-Vashoth. Tal-Vashoth mercenaries to be exact, hired by the Crows, for they know Zevran's name.

The ship's already small crew gets cut down, fast. Mukarukan sees the captain frantically try to steer the ship, as if in keeping busy, no one will attack him.

Mukarukan flings up protection barriers on herself and her companions, then puts her back to the wooden divide leading to the deck's cabins. She focuses on healing, as Nathaniel keeps a ranged position, and Cokí, Zevran, and the remaining, straggling sailors charge into the mess of yelling bodies.

Cokí collapses, but Mukarukan finishes his opponent with a shapeshift and hornet stings to the eyes, then changes again and staggers back to her position along the wall so she can cast, from a distance, a revival spell. Cokí jumps up and barks, howls in the joy of the fight, and goes right back into the fray.

“Good puppy,” she whispers, and counts down until she can recharge the moving shields around Zevran and Nathaniel.

Nathaniel.

He's too close to the edge of the ship, Mukarukan sees with a jolt of panic in her throat. He fumbles for a melee weapon, as a Tal-Vashoth corners him, dual swords in hand, backing him toward the railing. Nathaniel can't swim.

Mukarukan drains some mana from her own shield, and sends a blast of cycling elements at Nathaniel's foe, with a radius wide enough to help take down some of the others, too. Ice snaps and turns to water, water to flame, flame to blizzard, blizzard to rain, rain to gusts of stinging dust, and the Tal-Vashoth only has a moment to strike at Nathaniel, haphazardly with a fist, swords slipped, before the mercenary falls to the deck.

Mukarukan glances to the other side of the deck, and sees Zevran laughing and taunting to draw more enemies to him, before slipping into subterfuge and shadow. Mukarukan makes a run to Nathaniel, who's bowled over against the side of the ship, gasping.

“Nathaniel!” Mukarukan says, and grabs his arm to keep him from leaning too heavily against the railing. She wouldn't put her trust in that rickety wood.

Nathaniel stares, gasping, swaying, and dazed, at the churning ocean water. She sparks a healing spell into him, tugs him back away from the water again, and he shakes his head.

“Fine,” he rasps out. “I'm fine. Thank you.”

One hand still on Nathaniel's arm, Mukarukan turns in time to see one of the few remaining Tal-Vashoth plunge a dagger into the inside of Zevran's exposed bicep.

It is then that the ship crashes against land.

Mukarukan gets flung into the air as a horrible explosion of wood cracking fills the air, and lands with a jarring thud back on the deck. Winded and gasping for breath, Mukarukan climbs to her feet as quickly as her spasming, aching muscles allow her. Her staff landed within reach. She grabs it, and finishes off one of the Tal-Vashoth beginning to stir on the deck.

Cokí pushes out from a collapsed sail cloth, shakes himself off, and tears at the throat of another mercenary trying to stand. Nathaniel, kneeling from where he landed, his bow apparently undamaged, finishes off three more with rapid arrows. Then everything is silent.

“Zevran,” Mukarukan calls, squinting against sunlight reflecting off the water to search the cracked remains of the ship. “Zevran!”

“At your service,” Zevran says, and stands from behind some debris. “Well, that was stimulating.”

Mukarukan rushes over to him. “Let me take a look at that wound,” she says, and he obediently holds out his arm to her.

Though Zevran's bleeding very little from it, the wound is already blackening Zevran's skin around the edges, and seeping some pus.

“It's poisoned,” Mukarukan says, grimacing. Her magic can heal damage from poison, the secondary effects, but the root, the poison itself, it needs to be drawn out some other way.

“Never fear,” Zevran says, waving his other arm dismissively, as Nathaniel approaches, concerned too. “I have been prodded at by Crow daggers more times than I can count. Any good former Crow such as myself knows to carry the antidote.” He fishes in a pouch at his belt, and pulls out a small stoppered bottle, uncorks it, and drinks it.

Mukarukan keeps holding up his arm with one hand, watching the wound, and absently rubbing Zevran's chest with the other. The wound makes no change. She flicks her eyes up to Zevran's face expectantly, only to see his brown skin taking on a gray pallor. Mukarukan's heartbeat starts stuttering faster.

“Zevran,” she says, “How are you feeling?”

Zevran laughs, but it sounds hollow to Mukarukan. “Our dear archer almost took a plunge into his least favorite substance, _querida_ , why don't you dote over him instead?”

Zevran coughs in a fit bending at the waist, then gasps in a breath, rights himself, and clears his throat. He will not meet Mukarukan's gaze when he says, “I'm just a little... it was an unexpected fight. How embarrassing that...”

She presses her fingers against his neck to feel his pulse. It feels like a trapped, struggling bird.

“Nathaniel,” Mukarukan says carefully. “Can you please help me sit Zevran down?”

Nathaniel takes Zevran's other arm to guide him to sit, as Zevran scoffs.

“Mukarukan,” Zevran says, irritated now. “No one took the antidote from my person. They could not have tampered with it. Forgive me a moment of weakness, and then we can go see what part of beautiful Antiva we have thumped ourselves into. I have survived worse, believe me." He gives an angry scowl. "If you leave me be, I will tell you about the time I—”

Zevran's eyes suddenly look _through_ Mukarukan's. The gray of his skin worsens, his jaw slackens, and all of Zevran's muscles begin seizing.

Zevran stops breathing, his lips tinged with blue, and Cokí licks his face, crying out in a piercing shrill whine to no avail. The rush of numbness Mukarukan feels during true crisis arrives. Her hands are steady when she tugs the largest bottle of lyrium from her pack, drinks it in a few enormous gulps, and puts her hands, crackling with magic, around Zevran's throat. Her healing spell bursts into Zevran with a rush, and his chest begins to rise and fall once more, his eyelids fluttering with the effort to open, his breaths wheezing.

“Nathaniel,” Mukarukan says, “Animal bones from the food scraps below deck. I need them. Now, please.”

“Yes,” Nathaniel says, his expression grim but set, and he sprints through the debris to the trapdoor.

Mukarukan doesn't wait for his return, but plants a Lifeward spell on Zevran, and sends out more magic against his chest to stabilize his breathing. He's conscious, though barely.

"Come on, _guapo_ ," Mukarukan says to Zevran, and grips him under the armpits to pull him so he's sitting upright, her muscles trembling with the effort. She holds him with one arm as she shoves two fingers into his mouth to the back of his throat.

Zevran gags, but dryly, eyes dazed but bloodshot and bulging. Mukarukan swears, and sends a tiny jolt of force spell to flick down her fingertips to his throat, then tugs her hand out in time for him to vomit.

She rubs his back, hard, says, "Good, you're doing so good."

She makes Zevran vomit once more, her arms around him, touching him in comfort on his head, the back of his neck, his shoulders, as much as she can. He breaks into a sweat but after spitting weakly, breathes a little easier. Finally, _finally_ , Nathaniel returns, the quivering tray of some kind of poultry bones betraying Nathaniel's unsteady hands.

Mukarukan lights the bone on fire with a spell, then snaps out the flame, not bothering to let the charred remnants cool before crushing them between her fingers. She scoops the ash into her palm and holds it to Zevran's lips.

"Swallow, Zevran, please," she says, and it's a mark of how bad his condition is that he doesn't even look vaguely like he's about to say "Oh, but I always do" or "Many have asked this of me before, and they have not been disappointed.” He's only silent save for gasps, convulsing, and eats the ash from her hand.

“Water,” she says, and Nathaniel is already pressing a flask of it into her hand. She presses it to Zevran's mouth, lets him drink, wipes up what he spills from his chin with her sleeve, and helps him lay on his side.

Zevran's eyes squeeze shut, his eyebrows drawn in, his breaths still shuddering. The deck is a mess, but there are no sailors left alive to care.

Mukarukan turns now to the pacing Cokí, kisses him between the eyes, and says, “Scout us a place to go on land?”

He straightens his posture immediately, barks once, and bounds away off the ship onto the land where they've crashed.

Mukarukan waits, rubbing Zevran's uninjured arm, and Nathaniel squats down next to her.

“Can I assist any more?” Nathaniel asks.

“Not yet,” Mukarukan says. “When Cokí returns, can you carry Zevran off the ship?”

“Of course,” Nathaniel says.

Zevran's body is already tugging away her stabilizing spell, his skin slipping into cool and clammy. Mukarukan reactivates the ward, then says, “The regular Crow poison doesn't do this, it isn't so active. It just makes you a sitting duck.”

“They invested extra, perhaps?” Nathaniel offers.

She nods. "Something that's interacting with the antidote they knew he'd have. We have two problems at work here now, in his belly and in his blood, and the treatments don't line up very nicely.”

***

Nathaniel leaves Mukarukan looting the shipwreck for lyrium and other healing supplies, her eyes blazing in rage. He follows her mabari to an abandoned shack, dusty and unused save for pawprints and scuffle marks around the corpses of resident giant spiders that Cokí apparently finished off for them. Cokí chose wisely. The place is remote, but has a working water pump.

As the dog sprints away to find Mukarukan, Nathaniel carries Zevran to a delapidated, musty bed, lays him on his side as Mukarukan instructed, and kneels on the floor beside him.

Zevran still thrashes weakly and groans, slipping in and out of vague consciousness. Nathaniel watches over him and waits.

“Don't make me regret turning you and Mukarukan down even more than I already do,” Nathaniel mutters, though he does not know if Zevran can hear him. “I expect you to stay alive so I can take you up on the offer.”

When Mukarukan arrives, Nathaniel steps aside as she briskly squeezes, drains, flushes, and scrapes Zevran's dagger wound, then binds it with a cloth wrung in lyrium. She salts a bowl of water, then dribbles it into Zevran's mouth a little at a time.

Nathaniel had thought he'd seen her healing in action before, but never like this. “Aggressive” treatment wouldn't even begin to cover it. It is as if she wills that Zevran will recover, and plans to eradicate anything in the way. He witnesses the strange look across her eyes as she dips deep into the Fade for spirit healing, then the stern look on her face, discordant from her soothing murmurs in Common and Antivan, as cramps send Zevran's muscles visibly clenching and roiling, and Mukarukan tries to flex them with presses of her fingers and more magic.

When she prepares to settle into the bed with Zevran, Nathaniel asks, “What's the plan?”

Mukarukan won't meet his eyes when she says, “The primary poison is the worry now. All I can do is stabilize him, help him breathe, help his heart keep beating. The contamination will work itself out by morning.”

 _Or it won't_ , is the silent addition Nathaniel hears in her shadowed eyes.

She stays awake, holding Zevran against her as she sits, back to the headboard. She rests his head against her shoulder, drapes his body across her front, and lets his legs stretch out between hers. Zevran alternates from sleep to delirium and back again. Mukarukan explains that his proximity helps her magic transfer more directly, creates a flow, body to body. While true, Nathaniel suspects she also wishes him to be close, and he cannot blame her.

Cokí paces at the foot of the bed, occasionally letting loose quiet, high-pitched whines, before huffing and quieting himself, napping as the sun begins to set. Mukarukan just strokes Zevran's hair, kisses his head, and keeps a bucket handy for him when he needs it. Though Nathaniel has not consumed the massive amounts of lyrium Mukarukan has, he forces himself awake enough to clean when she needs him to.

After so much magic in such small quarters, Nathaniel can feel the throb of her spells like a steady heartbeat in the atmosphere around them.

"I find I miss Qunari plumbing," Nathaniel says, when he comes back with the freshly cleaned pail a third time.

Mukarukan looks up at him, then they burst into laughter, exhaustion and fear pouring out into gasping hysterics, however inappropriate and unfunny. They both try to calm themselves, then Nathaniel, failing, snorts on accident, and they both begin again.

***

Right before dawn, Zevran, still held draped over her as as she dips in and out of fitful bursts of sleep, mutters, “Was the wild party fun? I don't remember it, but I certainly taste it.”

Mukarukan does not clutch him as tightly as she wants to, not wishing to make him fear about how close he really was to death, and instead only says, "Good morning.”

As relief sweeps over her, her whole body begins to tremble, though she tries to stifle it for his sake.

Zevran shifts a little, and hisses in a breath, his eyelids squeezing shut, his face paling further. He breathes like that for a moment while she watches his face, her heart speeding, and then he opens his eyes again. “We are in Antiva?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I'm not sure. Outside of Afsaana, Nathaniel thinks.”

“The Crows will be searching.”

“Yes. We're keeping our eyes open.”

“Don't seek outside healers, you know they could be—"

She nods. “I know. I'll take care of you.”

Zevran's breath comes a little unsteady then, but when Mukarukan reaches out with her magic, his lungs are working without her help now. It's just that he's overwhelmed.

“I will not be able to fight for a while,” Zevran says.

“No,” she agrees.

“For a long time?”

“I don't know.”

“And no fucking then, either.”

She lets out a soft laugh. “Not yet, no. Not for a while.”

“Then why don't you just kill me now?” Zevran says, his voice a poor attempt for a joking tone. “If I am just a lump of sickened flesh to burden you with.”

Mukarukan lets her thoughts collect. Finally, she asks, "Fucking and fighting, are those the only two things you think you're worth?”

“I do not know."

“Zevran,” she whispers.

"I do not see alternatives.”

She presses kisses against his temples, squeezing him tighter now. “You're worthy of existing. Even if you do nothing.”

After everything he's been through, his exhaustion, how near he came to death, Mukarukan just holds him and doesn't say a word as his breath goes unsteady, quietly heaving as he fails to stifle himself and cries, his face turned away from her, the back of his neck heating in shame.

Zevran turns back to her when he has scrubbed his eyes dry with a hand. He grimaces. “I need more baths than Cokí. I am disgusting. How can you stand to be so near me? Demons? The power of love?”

"I smell just as bad as you now. I think I'm used to it."

He lets out a huff of a laugh, then groans. “I feel like a pack of brontos has been dancing on my chest.”

***

Ten days pass, squatting in the abandoned shack. Nathaniel cooks most of their meals, because Mukarukan, despite her ease at measuring potions, has little knack for food. Their days are filled with washing, scrubbing, and healing spells at first, later tentative exercise with Zevran.

Mukarukan has spoken of feeling adrift in dreams before, and Nathaniel wonders if this is what she means. So isolated from the outside world, in a house not their own, in a country he's never been, after crashing along a beach, their habits and hours seem to exist in a state separate from time and reality. They wait, and whether recovery or attack will come first, they do not know.

While Mukarukan takes over the easiest end steps of soup preparation, Nathaniel brings Zevran some water, glad to see him upright in the bed and better, if still weaker than before the battle.

Zevran looks up, and sighs dramatically when Nathaniel enters. “How will I ever ring this delightful little bell our Warden found if you are here all the time, attending to me lavishly? I feel like nobility.”

“No,” Nathaniel says, handing him the goblet. Nathaniel sits on the chair next to the bed, and bows his head. “Were I still to have access to true nobles' resources, you would be seen to by far more than just Mukarukan, adept though her healing is, and my clumsy self. I would have you have an entire fleet of healers.”

Zevran drinks the water deeply, then breathes out. “Ah, as tempting as so many powerful, attentive hands over me would be, what if I do not wish to be waited on by others?"

Nathaniel looks back to Zevran to find his expression smirking and flirtatious.

"Tell me, how will I find a way to repay you for your help?” Zevran purrs out.

“You owe me nothing,” Nathaniel says, serious and genuine. “Save your health.”

Zevran leans forward and touches Nathaniel's head, Nathaniel's hair. Zevran's hands are steady now, Nathaniel sees, feels, after enough days of rest and healing. Zevran's callouses are softer from disuse. It surprises Nathaniel that he still remembers the feel of them when they were rougher against his skin.

“You are one of very few, my dear sir,” Zevran murmurs, “who insists I owe nothing.” He sits back again, and gives a cheeky grin. “Yet, what if I wished for more... strenuous activities... once I have recovered?”

Nathaniel raises his brows. “Do you speak of intimate relations?”

“Why, I was hoping to go rock climbing with the mabari of course,” Zevran deflects, gesticulating. “There are some cliffs in Antiva nearly vertical, you see, and it would be an invigorating test of my reflexes.”

Nathaniel borrows Mukarukan's tactic of bemusedly and silently waiting for Zevran's bullshit to be done. It succeeds well. He should thank her.

“Well, yes,” Zevran finally concedes. “I wish for some physical pleasure. It has been far too long. And you are tall, dark, and handsome as ever. But you are not under obligation to join in.”

It feels more comfortable than ever for Nathaniel to say, now, “I would be honored, if Mukarukan assents and you would have me.”

“Yes, yes, though I thought you might wish to have me instead,” Zevran replies, his eyelids heavying into a heated gaze. Nathaniel's arousal jolts through him.

Zevran reaches out, and quirks his head. Nathaniel nods, and Zevran, blatant once he gets down to it, gropes with teasing lightness at Nathaniel. The fabric barrier of Nathaniel's clothes does little to numb the sensation, as Nathaniel's rushing blood stirs and hardens his cock in full. Nathaniel closes his eyes, mouth slightly open with breath, feeling himself flush.

“There now, some good color in your cheeks,” Zevran murmurs. “I would see you out in the sun more, your skin could turn brown easily, yes? Yes, I thought so, I can tell by your features, your hair. Yet you are so pale.” Nathaniel, with effort, opens his eyes, to watch Zevran's fingers lazily trace the coast of the outline of the bulge in Nathaniel's breeches.

Mukarukan enters and sets the soup bowl along a tall footstool they have appropriated as Zevran's bedside table.

“Zevran!” she scolds. “You are supposed to be healing and resting, not seducing your nursemaids.”

It is strange and wonderful that Nathaniel is learning, however slowly, not to feel guilt about her seeing him with her lover like this.

“Ah, but as you know, I am a menace,” Zevran says, moving his hand away only to give an open palmed shrug to her.

“Yes, I know,” she says, and grins.

Zevran turns his seduction to her, waggling his eyebrows. “You should chain me to this bed to stop me, _mi reina_ , as surely you wish what's best for me.”

“Soon.” Mukarukan leans over and kisses Zevran's forehead tenderly. “Try some of the soup. Cokí and I killed some vegetables just for you.”

Before Mukarukan goes, she says to Nathaniel, “Thank you for tending to him.”

To his surprise, Mukarukan kisses Nathaniel on the forehead too. She has never kissed him before. The press of her mouth is chaste, yet it is unbearably erotic, too, to have her lips touch him, even just his forehead, while he's hard.

***

Mukarukan stares at her map so hard Nathaniel wonders if it may be upside down.

“My research said it should be... hmm.” Mukarukan's face lights with triumph. “All right, I know where we're headed now.”

“Lead on, my lady,” Nathaniel says, and chuckles at her exaggerated scowl at the title. Her expression turns to a smile.

Zevran had been in a foul mood, claiming they were more watchful than Templars, and they agreed to leave him alone for a while. Mukarukan grudgingly agreed he was ready for some sparring with Cokí in their absence if he so desired.

After Zevran had shooed them out the door, Mukarukan announced to Nathaniel that now was as good a time as any to tell him she read of something he might be interested in. A small monument, she said, not far, in honor of Padric Howe, his Warden grandfather, for assisting some rural Antivans in killing a dragon at the start of the age.

They tread along the rocky valley, circling back only twice, until they find the spot Mukarukan pinpointed. Sure enough, there is a small, chipped, and crumbling stone statue of a dragon, with a small stone placard at its base, covered in moss and thin, twisted vines. Nathaniel approaches it with her, eager. For his family to be appreciated so far outside Ferelden is an honor indeed.

Mukarukan reaches it first, and strips away the foliage and moss with her hand. Her expression of contented interest falls away into surprise and distress.

Nathaniel sees it too. There are no more letters behind the plant matter, behind the layers of grime. Though they had once been, the stone has been smoothed away by time and weather. No longer any Howe name to mark the place.

“I thought it would still—” she begins, then shakes her head. “I'm so sorry, Nathaniel.”

Even where the Howe family has done right, upheld both definitions of nobility, their name has been erased. No one will remember, save some scholars in a footnote of a scroll. That, too, will decay. No one will remember.

"We can re-create it," Mukarukan offers. "We can engrave it again, and I can put a ward—"

The monument's disrepair, neglect... had someone tended to it over time, with care, it would still be present. Knowing this would have once enraged Nathaniel.

Instead, today, he finds that he breathes a sigh of relief.

“No,” he says. “There's no need."

Nathaniel finds he means it. He finds he doesn't care.

It is more freeing a feeling than he could have expected.

***

First, they set the scene.

Zevran and Mukarukan begin inside a shop, muttering to each other in a mix of Common and Antivan, looking at trinkets as if they might buy them.

“He was fiendishly good in bed,” Zevran says, as if he has casually let it slip. “You should try him sometime.”

Zevran paces out the beats in his mind. _Tres, dos, uno..._

“What?” Mukarukan shouts, projecting her voice as she spins toward him. “Did you say what I _think_ you just said? _Dime, pendejo!_ ”

“ _Princesa_ , please,” Zevran says, raising his hands up, letting out a nervous laugh.

At Mukarukan's dramatic display of magic, more light and sound than force, Zevran flings himself out the store door into the streets, as if he has been thrown, rolling to catch himself. His wound scar twinges only a little.

Their performance begins in full, on their stage of Antiva City's capitol square.

They have a wide audience, commoners and Crows, and oh yes, Nathaniel too, blending with the crowd for the backup they will, with luck on their side, not need.

Guards don't bother to intervene, for Crow corruption runs deep, and they recognize Zevran, exactly as he hoped they would. They only stand back and watch with the rest of the civilian spectators, some who laugh, some who gasp, all who seem unable to draw their attention away. Act one.

“I thought you loved me! How dare you!” Mukarukan shrieks, her Fade shield swirling about her and warping reality to glimpse the darkness of dreams for short flickers and waves. She looks very intimidating indeed. “With a _man_ , too!”

Zevran draws his daggers, and ducks the spell bolt they have rehearsed, so it splits a hole in the pavement and not Zevran's chest. He flings out the full force of his arrogant laughter, channeling his reckless assassin days of old, and shouts back, “Ah, my dear, I told you I sought my pleasure in a wide variety of places. It is your fault you failed to realize which places those were!”

She looks deliciously malevolent. “After all I did for you!” A blast of magic.

On cue, Zevran dives and rolls to flank, then throws his knife to her neck. Mukarukan freezes it mid-air and casts it aside with a shatter on the ground. Someone in the crowd jeers. A child weeps.

“I heal you from death's door, and this is how you repay me?” Mukarukan shouts. Another blast of magic. “I should have let you rot!”

Act two. “Your loss you did not!” Zevran calls out, and promises himself to kiss her a thousand times to make up for their next trick, as he ducks underneath a blast of icicles, and stabs his remaining dagger into her stomach.

Mukarukan lets out a cry of pain, and pulls the dagger from herself, stumbling enough while looking at the wound to turn and cheat out, letting the crowds see the real gash and blood. As Zevran makes to charge her from behind, she presses a hand to the wound, and heals herself. With a roar, she shapeshifts into a bear.

And now for act three.

Mukarukan's gaping bear jaw, bigger than his whole head and full of glistening razor teeth, flies toward Zevran, and he needs little skill to create a convincing look of terror. A paw swipes him onto his stomach, and teeth grab the back of his armor like a scruff. Then Zevran is sailing through the air, and lands with a groan in the center of the square. He'll have a few bruises later.

Zevran rolls onto his back, contorting his face into withering hate and injury. He tries to stand, and falls back down.

" _Puta_ ," he calls in a harsh voice, and spits in her direction.

She shifts back into her real form, and approaches him, staff raised. She looks like a goddess of vengeance.

As the crowd's eyes are drawn to Mukarukan's raging eruption into a tempest of fire, Zevran sleights the little gift from their Qunari friends out of his belt, and rolls it along the ground toward his boots. He crushes it under his heel. They're ready for their finale.

The crowds scream and cough. In the raining explosion of (harmless) fire, and the thick, entirely opague green clouds from the haze of the (diluted) Qunari fog bomb, Mukarukan drops to the ground beside Zevran. They hold their breaths. She kisses him hard on the mouth, sends a burst of healing into him, curing his aches from the fall, then drops a burned set of his armor and a pile of cremated ashes onto the ground. Still guarded by the thick fog, they slip away before they fall harmlessly but persistently unconscious from it, as many in their audience will. Outside the range of fog, they suck in breaths and sprint into the wilderness.

As soon as they slam the door of the shack, Mukarukan sinks down to the floor against the wall, laughing breathlessly. Zevran drops to the floor too, and through his own grin, showers kisses over the slice in her robes where his knife had gone.

Nathaniel and Cokí will return soon, and give word if the Qunari are ready to act.

In the mean time, Zevran is a dead man. It has never felt better.

***

Zevran wonders if Mukarukan fully realizes the madness of her plan. He is certain she hasn't considered the gravity of inviting her precious Qunari to an act that could break the Llomeryn Accords. She did not grow up in Antiva as he did. She does not feel the significance of Qunari troops in Antiva City's streets.

Cokí, the Arishok, and the Architect—who the Arishok stubbornly refers to as “ill saarebas” much to the darkspawn's amusing dismay—rally Qunari troops and a handful of darkspawn in preparation for a frontal assault full prison break on the Crows' towering fortress penitentiary. It is the least stealthy and most ambitiously chaotic distraction plan Zevran has ever had the misfortune to hear about.

Delilah joins them in Antiva, refusing to miss the fun, and so she, Zevran, Nathaniel, and Mukarukan prepare for their smaller, more surreptitious break-in of the Crow headquarters. The building will likely be empty given the... extenuating circumstances. That much Zevran agrees is true.

Ah well. Politics have never interested him anyway. What's another Exalted March or two?

 

Zevran's Warden stands unmoving, staff clutched to her chest, acknowledging her limits as far as surreptitiousness and dextrousness are concerned. Zevran, Delilah, and Nathaniel detect and disable the elaborate traps crowding each room they pass through. Delilah proves she is not merely gorgeous and reproductive, but also skilled at tripwires and hidden panels. Nathaniel has a fondness for mathematical puzzle mechanisms that Zevran has no patience for. Zevran himself, having glimpsed some of these rooms before, has the upper hand on detection. Mukarukan tiptoes after them with caution.

When they reach enough depths to reveal the library, and all dangers are disarmed there, too, they take a few moments to flip through the countless books and records, a palace of information on Antiva and the world. Mukarukan, scholar at heart, skims through charts and papers, a look of intent concentration pasted across her face. Delilah, on the other hand, seems to be getting ambitious.

“Fuck, think of what someone could do with all of this,” Delilah muses, impressed. “I could rule the world.”

“Don't take after Father now,” Nathaniel says, flipping through a chest of thick bound files at the top of some balcony stairs.

“Shut your face, Nate,” Delilah retorts, flushing with anger.

Nathaniel looks up suddenly. “Mukarukan,” he says.

She goes to Nathaniel, then takes a thick stack of papers in her hand. “Zevran, we found you,” Mukarukan says.

“Hmm?” Zevran asks absently, then looks again at the stack of papers. His stomach lurches. “That's—”

Mukarukan nods. “The records the Crows kept on you.”

It will have everything, Zevran knows. Every one of the terrible things he's ever done. Things Mukarukan knows, yes, vaguely and in theory, but it is different, is it not? This is his life laid bare on the page. Cold charts of every failing, of every person who had him, of every despicable act Zevran committed. Every death he made beautiful with his practiced art of murder, even as Zevran knew, but did not care, that it was wrong. She will read how Zevran did not even try to escape. They fed him, did they not? Gave him clothes, training, lovers, a place to live? He was not willing, not precisely, but to say he was unwilling feels like a lie.

And there in words is his wreck of a life, for the both of them to read. He will not keep it from them, but he does not cherish knowing he will become that much more difficult to love.

“Fireplace?” Nathaniel asks, matter-of-fact.

“Absolutely,” Mukarukan replies, without hesitation. “Fine by you, Zev?”

Zevran stares at the two of them.

“Yes,” Zevran finally agrees weakly, barely able to breathe.

Mukarukan carries the stack of papers down the stairs unread, and dumps them from her arms into the fireplace. The flame falters for an instant, then blazes, eating the pages until only blackened curls of parchment remain, then only ash.

Mukarukan kisses Zevran on the tip of one ear. “I trust you,” she says. “I need know nothing but what you share.”

Zevran, dazed, glances up to where Nathaniel stands. Nathaniel looks him in the eyes, and gives a single nod.

The moment is broken when Delilah begins making slurping kiss noises.

"I'm still here, lovebirds," Delilah says.

Soon, they have all contracts, all communiques, all records of recruitment or slavery, and control of the base. When Mukarukan peers out a scope near the top of the building, she reports the Architect's signal flares in the air above the Crow prison. Success.

The guildmaster is already dead. The remaining Crow leaders will have died or surrendered. The many powers with ties to Crow business care not who is behind the Crows—people are interchangable. And so, as difficult as years and years of Zevran's life, and as easy as breaking in and taking control of the paperwork and treasuries, Zevran runs the Crows.

***

“I have a greedy baby to go feed,” Delilah says to Mukarukan, after she helps Nathaniel and Zevran disarm the last of the traps in the master bedroom. "I would have strapped him to me if I'd known it was going to be that easy."

Mukarukan grins, still riding the high of their success. “Give him a big smooch for me.”

“You'll have enough big smooches, I think,” Delilah says. “Have fun, but don't tell me a word about it because thinking about Nate in bed with anyone is worse than morning sickness.”

A laugh comes spitting out of Mukarukan before she expects it. “You're speaking too soon, Delilah.”

“Oh no I'm not. Have you seen the look on Nate's face? But this is that talking about it thing we're not going to do.”

They kiss each other's cheeks before Delilah slips away. Mukarukan locks the intricate bolts of the door, the metal knobs shaped like crows taking flight.

Mukarukan turns to look at Zevran and Nathaniel, who both stand looking as energized and gleeful as she feels.

“We are... ridiculously awesome,” Zevran says.

***

“How fitting,” Zevran says, “that our mission ends in a bedroom. I could not have planned this more perfectly.”

Nathaniel doesn't look away when Mukarukan goes to Zevran, and kisses him, deep and open mouthed, her thumbs against his temples and her fingers fitting against the base of Zevran's head.

It feels more natural by the moment, as Mukarukan pulls her head away from Zevran's, plants one more softer kiss on his lips, then nods in encouragement. Zevran goes to Nathaniel. Nathaniel is ready for him. Zevran reaches up to the back of Nathaniel's neck with a hand, and kisses him. Nathaniel finds the place on Zevran's hips he gripped before, far before, in Kirkwall, and grips there again, Zevran's mouth just as hot now as then. When Nathaniel opens his eyes again, Mukarukan is watching them, dark-eyed, mouth open a sliver.

This has been a long time in the making, and suddenly Nathaniel doesn't know why it took so long or what his reasons were to fear this. He holds out a hand, palm open and up, to Mukarukan, and she walks the few paces to him, stands on tiptoe, and then her mouth is on Nathaniel's for the first time. They fumble for a moment, both seeking the other's bottom lip, Zevran's preferences causing them to stumble. Then Nathaniel cedes the reigns to her. Mukarukan sucks at his lip, and touches the feel of his stubble, then pulls back to look at him. She playfully flicks at the patch of carefully trimmed hair between his bottom lip and chin. Her eyes are bright. More and more Nathaniel finds he wants to drop to his knees and have her do whatever she wishes. To touch him, or hurt him, or humiliate him, he will accept everything, anything at all.

“What do you like, Nathaniel?” she asks against his lips.

“I am yours to command,” Nathaniel rasps out.

“I want your mouth on me,” Mukarukan murmurs. “Would you like that?” She kisses him again.

“Please,” Nathaniel says, hoarse, and his cock jerks at the thought.

On her way to the bed, Mukarukan detours to make quick work of stripping Zevran of his armor, kissing him all the while. Nathaniel watches as she who has no sense of direction touches each of Zevran's back and shoulder tattoos in perfect alignment. Though they are smooth and unridged, she traces them without looking. She has spent time mapping them, studying them, Nathaniel knows.

She pulls Zevran with her to the head of the bed, and rests back, raising her head up to smile at Nathaniel as Zevran gestures for him to draw nearer.

“There is room enough for all of us,” Zevran murmurs, and helps Mukarukan tug off her robes, jewelry, breast band. Zevran takes her breasts in the palms of his hands and sucks at her brown and stiffening nipples to her mumbles of encouragement.

Too eager to bother taking off his own light armor or even help Mukarukan's writhing hands pull down her smallclothes, Nathaniel simply stretches out across the bed, spreads her thighs, and mouths her through the cloth, catching the fabric and her swollen folds underneath with his lips and sucking, until her smalls are wet with her arousal and Nathaniel's mouth both. Mukarukan lets out a noise that seems precariously balanced between impatience and contentment, and Nathaniel, glancing up from between her legs, sees her tilt her head and seek Zevran's mouth with her own, eyes squeezed shut. Nathaniel rolls his hips against the bed to relieve the pressure in his cock, though like scratching a persistent itch, the motion only makes him ache more.

Nathaniel tugs aside Mukarukan's smalls, then works his tongue against her in earnest now, the disarray of black curls between her legs damp with the scent of fresh musk, Nathaniel's cock ever harder, Mukarukan's folds slick and soft against his lips and tongue.

When her noises grow throatier, lower, Nathaniel pulls back pressure and flicks his tongue faster. She clenches her thighs around his head, shudders like an earthquake, and comes, her muscles heaving against his mouth in convulsions as he swipes kisses against her. Her legs relax around him. Mukarukan lets out a long, breathy noise that starts with an “oh” and is stifled and shifted to a satisfied hum as Zevran surprises her with another kiss on the mouth.

Nathaniel kisses the inside of Mukarukan's thigh, then rises to his knees, tugging off the top half of his armor, and his tunic. Mukarukan is smiling, her eyes closed, though it appears she's making a valiant effort to open them. Zevran watches Nathaniel with heavy lidded, content eyes, playing between Mukarukan's nipples and ear with one hand, stroking himself lazily with the other.

Zevran's cock is slim like he is, darker than the brown of his skin everywhere else, flushed, and hard.

Nathaniel says, “I want to suck you,” because he does.

“This I can provide,” Zevran says, lids dropping heavier, and Nathaniel kneels between Zevran's knees as Mukarukan makes a little high-pitched sigh.

“This I have to watch,” Mukarukan says, and rolls to her side, opening her sleepy eyes.

Nathaniel puts his hands on Zevran first, then slides his mouth over Zevran's cock, receiving a hum of pleasure from above him as reward. Nathaniel has no practice with this, and is not overconfident enough to slide Zevran too deep, though the fleeting idea of _Zevran_ gagging, eyes watering but glimmering with delight too as Nathaniel thrusts _his_ cock to the back of Zevran's throat, stirs Nathaniel's erection harder. Even without depth, Nathaniel sets a sliding rhythm near the tip, and makes up for the rest with his hand. Zevran's moans are unapologetic and send a pulse to Nathaniel's groin.

Mukarukan, at Nathaniel's side, whispers, “Can I touch you?”

“Yes,” Nathaniel gasps, before sliding his mouth down over Zevran once more, tasting a drop he squeezes from the tip.

He feels Mukarukan kneel behind him. She wraps her arms around his chest, stroking a hand over his throat, pressing her bare body tight against him, petting a hand through the hair on his chest, his stomach, and trailing lower. The flat of her palm rubs him through the cup of armor over his yet to be freed cock. The touch with the restriction is just on the good side of painful. With increasing determination, Nathaniel speeds his suction, as Zevran's breath gets quicker and more audible.

“Zevran likes being deprived of what he wants for a while,” Mukarukan breathes in Nathaniel's ear as he shivers and arches his hips against the press of her hand.

Nathaniel finds the thought pleasing, and just as Zevran's hips begin to twitch, Nathaniel pulls his mouth and hand away. 

Zevran blinks down blearily at Nathaniel, heat high in his cheeks, and Nathaniel can't help but grin.

Zevran grunts and flops backwards against the bed's cushioned headboard, groaning. “Mukarukan put you up to that, didn't she?” 

Mukarukan laughs. Despite his protests, Zevran looks delighted, and doesn't try to touch himself.

“She did indeed,” Nathaniel says, and turns to kiss her.

Nathaniel is harder than he ever remembers being, Mukarukan's taste and a hint of Zevran's in his mouth, the flavor resting in the back of his throat and coursing his blood through his veins. He does not hesitate to agree when Mukarukan makes a fussing noise, and says, “Can I get you out of those pants and get you inside me, Nathaniel?”

“An excellent tactical plan, my lady,” Nathaniel says, getting the _un_ -ladylike snort from her he was hoping to hear. 

Zevran slides a hand to rub in circles at the nub of nerves right above where Mukarukan's thighs rub together. She helps Nathaniel tug off the rest of his clothes, and hooks a leg around him, letting the other still rest on the bed, to give Zevran access to touch her.

Nathaniel takes a moment to gaze at Mukarukan's eager, flushed face, the bangs of her hair askew, her smile dimpling her cheek under her tattoos. He gazes at the fire in Zevran's eyes, the flush up his high cheekbones, the curve of _his_ tattoos too. “You are beautiful,” he says. “Both of you.”

“Beautiful and _deadly_ ,” Zevran corrects. “That part is very important to her.”

Mukarukan rolls her eyes, and reaches up to push some of Nathaniel's loose hair behind his ears. “You're beautiful, too,” she says.

Nathaniel sinks into her. She is fever-hot, slick, and powerfully-muscled around his cock, and he finds he already trembles with restraint.

“Oh,” Mukarukan says.

“I love making her speechless,” Zevran says. 

Mukarukan turns her head and licks Zevran's nose before his reflexes can stop her. Zevran lets out a clear, loud laugh. “She can retaliate, however, be warned.”

“Mukarukan,” Nathaniel says, voice ragged, breathing thick, barely able to move inside of her for fear he'll lose his precariously held control. “Mukarukan.”

“Mm hm?” she replies.

The mischievous glint in her eyes is Nathaniel's only warning before she squeezes tighter around him. He groans. This will not take long. Time enough later to prove prowess. Nathaniel thrusts deeper to lay closer to her, as she tilts her hips up in encouragement. He seeks Zevran's lips for a kiss, then kisses Mukarukan too.

“Do you want to come inside me?” Mukarukan whispers, running her hand up under his hair to the base of his neck, twisting his hair until a tangle around her hand, releasing it to let it fall down, then grabbing it up again.

“Maker yes,” Nathaniel growls low.

Zevran's hand trails lower and lower down Nathaniel's back, then stops. Nathaniel nods before Zevran can even form the words on his damp, flushed lips. Zevran grins, and lets his touch descend, as the tilt of Nathaniel's hips speeds, until Mukarukan is flushed and crying out again. Zevran rubs and taps a gentle finger near Nathaniel's entrance. Overwhelmed in the best of ways, Nathaniel presses his face to Mukarukan's cheek, brushes a kiss far softer than his thrusts there, then pushes himself deep once more, and comes.

When he and Mukarukan recover their breath, they look to find that Zevran is close again, by his own stroking hand. Mukarukan pulls Zevran's hand away with a tight grip around his wrist. Zevran pants wildly.

She strokes Zevran, slow, and with scattered firm squeezes around the base of his cock.

“What do you think, Nathaniel?” Mukarukan muses. “Should we let him come? Has he been good?”

“Doubtful,” Zevran pants, muscles shuddering, gasping as her hand creeps along, careful, practiced.

“There we have it,” Nathaniel says. “Not good. What say you, Mukarukan? Does strong-willed count for something?”

“Only when she's feeling merciful,” Zevran groans, writhing but carefully holding his own hands away from himself. He shouts out a breath of a noise when Mukarukan rolls the palm of her hand once over the head of Zevran's cock. 

“I'll be nice this once, in celebration,” Mukarukan teases, and then speeds her hand.

Nathaniel watches rapt, hand on Zevran's thigh, as Zevran comes in long spurts with a harsh arch of his back and an Antivan curse.

When the three tangle their limbs together in disregard of any stickiness, a laugh blooms in Nathaniel's chest.

Though he cannot hope to mimic Mukarukan's delivery of the line, he chuckles, shakes his head and mutters, “With a _man_ , too!”

***

_Nathaniel is the easiest to find, because of the Taint._

_“Will you take my hand?” you ask._

_“Of course,” he answers. When he does, you concentrate, you try. He blinks, and knows. “A dream?”_

_“Yes. Let's find Zev.”_

_You do. You take Zevran's hand, too. They will fall away from you if they let go, they will wake up or drift to new dreams, but they do not let go. You make them a dream of something you love. In the dream, you shed your Circle robes, like peeling away a mask. The sun is bright, prickling against your arms, taking away all paleness, warming everything._

_You hold on to Zevran, you hold on to Nathaniel, and there is limitless space around you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  16 “little blade”; endearment (Elvish)   
>    
>  17 “I love you” (Elvish)   
>    
>  18 Reciting Dalish farewell and mourning verses, roughly translated as “May your journey go safely, we may still find a path home tomorrow, that joyful moment when I return once more to my family”   
>    
>  19 Qunari cow; insult to intelligence (Qunlat)   
>    
>  20 “He doesn't exist.” (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  21 “Why?” (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  22 “The warrior who carries Asala does not exist. The Arishok exists.” (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  23 “Sten is the new Arishok” (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  24 “Where is the Arishok?” (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  25 “Arishok is where he can best fulfill his duty.” (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  26 Colloquially wry phrase similar to “That's the way of things, right?” (“Antivan”/Spanish)   
>    
>  27 “Take refuge in safety” or a respectful goodbye (Qunlat)   
>    
>  28 “Glory to the Qunari” (Qunlat)   
>    
>  29 Literally “Enough, dangerous thing”; “Enough, mage” (Qunlat)   
>    
>  30 “Struggle is an illusion”; major tenet of the Qun (Qunlat)   
>    
>  31 Literally “thing who holds back evil”; non-Qunari who keeps a mage from evil actions (Qunlat)   
>    
>  32 “There is nothing to struggle against” (Qunlat)


	6. Chapter 6

_Two Architects suckle on your wrists, like infants clinging for milk. Your blood leaves you down each arm like the tide pulling away._

_The Architect on your left—or is it your right? He wears the_ saarebas _collar heavy against his neck—or is it your neck? The collar gapes with the jaw of a dragon skull, dry of marrow, soon to shatter. Your hound digs and digs at dirt, burying teeth in the ground, and he is too far away for you to call out and tell him they will never sprout, never grow._

_Your feet are bare, suspended and soaking in a bowl of blood, filled from waterfalls of Zevran's neck, of Nathaniel's neck. You try to stop them, as they hunch and drain for you, but they are fountains. They won't cease pouring. It is their purpose. It is your purpose to take._

_You don't want to. But from the day you were born, you took._

_Wings curl against rock. Dragon wings, but they are plucked away like moth, mosquito, hummingbird, in a cruel apprentice's fingers. You try to scream, but you can't, because the night is not yours any longer. You try to scream, but you can't, because you're sleeping. You've been sleeping for a long time, here under the earth._

_You wear a blindfold, but it's slipping._

***

The rulers of Antiva discover that the Qunari bombarding the Crow prison were not Qunari at all. Why, no! But of course they were Tal-Vashoth! A Crowe regime change, some mercenaries. A complicated matter, do not concern yourself.

Fears of Qunari invasion settle, for most are ignorant enough not to have noticed it was the Arishok himself who commanded soldiers into Antiva. Many do not know what an Arishok is.

Crow contacts across the entirety of Thedas balk with confusion over the next few weeks, as assassins and middlemen alike, purchased on slaving markets by the Crows, are delivered packages. In each, the contents are the same: enormous sums of money and a letter, releasing them from bondage, with a seal of protection. Crow assassins will be watching and will keep them safe wherever they may go.

It is unprecedented. Still, no one questions the whims of the Crows, as long as the money keeps flowing and people keep dying. And if less are dying now, and the ones who die are tending toward a trend (namely, slavers, murderers of children, humans who torture elves for fun...), well, who really notices a difference?

 

“You need a title,” Mukarukan says, absently chewing on a chunk of garlic-dipped bread Nathaniel has prepared with dinner, while she skims old contracts and sorts them into piles.

Zevran dozes by his own stacks of paper. He is admittedly a little overwhelmed with the concept of leadership. It was not so long ago that choosing what to do with his own life was new and frightening. And now he is expected to tell _others_ what to do?

He rouses himself a little from his stupor. “If you can come up with a name splendid enough to encompass me," Zevran says, "I will use it. I will even sign all my forms with it.”

Mukarukan grins. “All right, now I need to think about this.”

“I'm afraid I can only think of 'King of the Crows,'” Nathaniel offers, shrugging.

“' _El Rey de Los Cuervos_ ,' then,” Mukarukan suggests. “We are in Antiva, after all. Hmm... or keep it vague. ' _El Jefe_.' 33 Very mysterious.”

“Enough, enough,” Zevran says, “I've chosen one myself. Bird Emperor. I will be Bird Emperor.”

Mukarukan throws her arms across her face, giggling.

***

When Nathaniel slides into Zevran with a rasping groan, it is almost as though Mukarukan can feel it too, Zevran inside of her on his hands and knees as she lies on her back, Nathaniel upright behind Zevran.

Zevran's forehead is slick with clean sweat as he gasps, looking agonized, not from pain but pleasure and pressure. He rests his forehead against hers, trapped between her and Nathaniel, and barely able to thrust into her for the tight press of their bodies. The jolts from Nathaniel's moving hips vibrate from Zevran's body up to the insides of Mukarukan's thighs. Already too high on the both of them for too long before they even began this, she tilts her hips up to help rock Zevran deep into her. She squeezes her thighs together once, twice, and comes. It feels like diving into a pool of warmth, radiating up from her pelvis to the whole of her. She gasps in laughter.

Her climax begins a chain reaction. Zevran, suddenly even harder inside her, groans and trembles, cursing until he comes, eyes damp from strain and sensation. Mukarukan strokes Zevran's hair, breathless, and looks up to Nathaniel in time to see the grim, fierce determination on his face surrender into near-pained bliss. Another leap of desire pounces behind Mukarukan's navel.

They detangle slowly, but once they do, everything is quick again. Nathaniel flings himself onto his back, and reaches for her thighs, as Mukarukan stumbles on her knees across the bed to him. She kisses him hard on the mouth, then rights herself over him, a knee on either side of his head, pulling his draping tangles of hair up above his head so she doesn't tug it on accident. If she's going to tug his hair, she wants to do it on purpose.

Mukarukan's limbs feel heavy and buoyant all at once, and she sways, but Zevran is there to hold her upright as Nathaniel pulls her hips down and meets her spread thighs with his eager mouth, his hands tugging outward at her buttocks, kneading, as Zevran's fluid mixes with her own inside her to anoint Nathaniel's chin.

***

Mukarukan opens her eyes after slipping in and out of the Fade, restlessly, for hours. (The Beyond, she reminds herself, she wants to remember who she is, she wants to use elf phrases.) Nathaniel is already awake, staring at the ceiling and absently running the fingers of one hand up and down the two curves of the _vallas'lin_ on Zevran's face. His other hand is still tucked between Mukarukan's legs where she curled her bare thighs around it the night before and fell asleep, still grappling it away from his use or circulation. His cool arm nestles against her sternum, and Zevran's head rests on his bare chest and the thatch of dark hair there.

Zevran's face is both less strained and less comical in his sleep. Sleep makes him look older, but brings a contentment across his face that is never at risk of being forced.

Mukarukan arches her back, stretching, and squeezes her thighs to press Nathaniel's hand against her, then frees him, lets him have his limb back. He rubs a thumb against her inner thigh, then removes his arm to drape it around her shoulders and allow her to move closer. She shifts and nestles against him.

"You can feel it too," she more mouths than whispers to Nathaniel.

He turns his head toward her, carefully. None of the three ever wish to make anything but the most deliberate and cautious of movements in the early morning. They don't wish to wake any of them still asleep, not when rest is so hard to come by for all of them.

The Taint is something she has saved Zevran from, something she need not trouble him with, when Nathaniel knows what it feels like without her faulty explanations. The visions, the feeling. Like floating up then being pulled apart, like mourning Alistair and the dragon as if they were one, like snorting lyrium without ever being told the risks because in a dream it's Duncan who's given it to her, from the Dusters who never became Paragons, and Duncan never tells anyone the whole story. Getting people into his story is more important than keeping their love. And in the dream, Duncan's Loghain, and he dies so she can keep Alistair for one more day, and only too late she finds out killing Duncan would have saved Alistair. She means, killing Loghain. She means, saving Loghain. The line between dreams and her life is slippery sometimes. All the possibilities stretch in front of her.

Sometimes Mukarukan wishes she had no magic, so she'd be contained in herself alone.

But sometimes she wishes she could create a real Landsmeet, where the people of the lands touch each other, mind and spirit.

"I can," Nathaniel says simply, and the visions go back to where they belong for now.

Nathaniel is grim, but then smiles at her anyway. Mukarukan wonders what the Taint's dreams are like without the Fade's familiarity. Simpler? Or more confusing than her own?

She sees Zevran open his eyes blearily, stickily. He grumbles a low " _querido?_ " into Nathaniel's chest.

Mukarukan reaches and rubs a thumb against Zevran's brown hip, riddled with paler scars. She pushes herself up to lean and kiss his forehead, before she burrows back against Nathaniel.

Something—the Architect's opposition, or the Seekers, or the ever-tightening clutch of the Chantry, or Flemeth who Morrigan never convinced her to kill?—is beginning. It echoes through the Taint's connection like blades dropped and clattering on polished stone.

Zevran never takes long to fully wake. He lifts up onto his elbows, still resting on his stomach, and looks at Mukarukan as he often does—as though he's remembering that he's near her, and that it's the best news he's received in months. Years, maybe.

His lifetime, he's claimed, but Mukarukan doesn't want him to have hurt so long without her.

"My Grey Warden," he murmurs to her, then winks at Nathaniel. "Wardens."

But, then again, something is always beginning.

***

Ferelden feels colder after spending time away. Mukarukan's bones ache when the chill sweeps into her, even through denser robes, heavier boots.

But the Architect calls her here, and Mukarukan made him a promise. So she, Zevran, Nathaniel, and Cokí leave the Crows in Delilah's capable hands—the heat and moisture is better for Nathaniel's nephew anyway—and travel back.

 

“I was under the impression the dragons didn't matter,” Mukarukan says, gnashing her nails against her palms as she tries to keep from glaring.

“They have always mattered.” The Architect is calm as ever.

“But,” Mukarukan protests, “if they sleep, let them sleep. They're doing no harm now. The Calling is meaningless if all your people are awakened.”

“No," the Architect says. "Your plan is unsustainable. The dragons cannot be awakened, so they must be destroyed. Nothing else ensures the end of Blights. Your Warden oath demands it, just as much as my people's freedom does.”

“When Alistair defeated the Archdemon _you_ revived,” Mukarukan says, “I had entire armies at my command. Dwarves, Dalish, Circle mages, Eamon's human soldiers, plus Anora's troops from Denerim. The Qunari will help, they can spare some, but they can't spare armies, not like that, not to make up for the five factions that followed me. And there's no one else. I have only two Wardens. Three including me. Four if you count my mabari.”

“Five,” the Architect says. “The sister will come.”

Mukarukan purses her lips. “Maybe five.”

“She will help. Seranni oversaw her vow to help the Disciples when in need.”

“Well, Velanna can still change her mind if she wants to,” Mukarukan snaps. “Look, your Disciples are few in number, and getting fewer. We can't just barge in there and expect to take down Lusacan.”

“No,” he agrees. “First, we will need to awaken a greater number more efficiently. I believe our combined magics can do so.”

***

“How are you?” Nathaniel asks a fidgeting Velanna, as they gather at the intersection of several Deep Roads caverns.

The red, sickened flesh on rocks pulses with the physical embodiment of the Taint. Mukarukan and the Architect mutter to each other about spells and darkspawn proximity.

Velanna shoots him a glare. “Not great.”

“That is... unsurprising,” Nathaniel says.

“And what's that supposed to mean, _shem'len_? The angry clanless Dalish is never any fucking fun?”

“No,” he says. “Only that your sister's passing was not so long ago, and here you stand, about to give up blood to assist the creatures who shortened her life. Not enjoyable for anyone.”

When she looks at him warily, Nathaniel continues, “My sister... she's very important to me, for all our squabbles. I once thought I lost her. I know the feeling can be enough to push away a great deal of hope. I'm very sorry for your loss.”

Velanna nods once, a jerked motion, but ducks away to a more isolated place when she glimpses Mukarukan and Oghren approaching.

“When this is all over,” Oghren announces. “I'm gonna take my stipends and host a pretty dress party. You're gonna have to wear a pretty dress too, Commander.”

Oghren refuses to stop using Mukarukan's former title.

“And I'm gonna wear the poofiest, prettiest princess dress in all of Thedas,” Oghren continues, “with little dancing ponies all around the trim. The _poniest_ dress! And archer boy's not invited.”

Nathaniel is taken aback. “And why is that?”

“You'll have to wear a dress, didn't ya hear?”

“How precisely does this exclude me?”

“You'll wear one?”

“I will,” Nathaniel says solemnly.

“Ah, well, there we go! I knew I liked you!” Oghren slaps Nathaniel hard across the chest, then turns back to Mukarukan. “Can we do that, 'Karukan?”

“Yes, we can,” she says.

This sounds like the party of the age.

***

Mukarukan carefully draws thirty vials of blood from herself, thirty-five from Nathaniel and Oghren, none from Cokí for the unknown effects, and none from Velanna because she does not look willing (at which point Velanna rages at her and draws thirty vials herself).

She sets them in the bowl at the center of the cavern hub, and asks the others to step away from the walls. One-hundred and thirty Disciples in just a few moments, if the Architect is right.

She joins hands with the Architect over the vials, her staff held between both their left hands, and they nod at each other once, twice, then a third time.

Through his grasp, the Architect tugs her into the root of the Taint's connection, and she gasps, having to draw on the Taint-opposed Beyond to re-center herself so she won't faint. Mukarukan sends a burst of focus out and down, and the vials rise and shatter against all surrounding walls.

It is the Architect's magic she feels tugging the blood through the walls, then, the pulsing, half-living flesh. It coats in entirety, and seeps out the other side of the rock, into the caverns in closest proximity. Then it is the Architect's magic _using_ her magic that bursts the Taint out of the walls, sending it traveling, seeking. She can feel him _take_ her shapeshifting power, just for a moment, but she doesn't transform and neither does he.

The blood does.

One-hundred and thirty lines of it grow stingers, and now Mukarukan feels weaker, tries to keep her knees steady without locking them, pushing herself just a little longer, as the Architect's finishes the last of their task and finds his people in his mind, through the magic and through the Taint.

And then it is done. The Architect lets go of her hands and strides to the nearest cavern, leaving Mukarukan alone with buckling knees.

Nathaniel catches her under the arms before she can slump to the ground. Zevran wanted to be here in case she had this reaction, but with low risks for everyone Tainted, the main concern the blood flying every which way, she refused his offer.

"How do you fare?" Nathaniel asks. "Did it succeed?"

Mukarukan turns in his grasp so she can lean her weight forward, her head against his chest. "Do you hear them?" she asks.

The surrounding caves are filled first with murmuring voices, then yelling, too, and the sounds of confusion. New Disciples, one-hundred and thirty of them, with words on their lips—for the first time if birthed of brood mothers, or the first time in a long time if simply turned.

Mukarukan had wondered why their voices always seemed to speak in Common, sometimes Antivan, sometimes a little Elvish, flashes of Qunlat, but nothing else. Of all the languages of Thedas? Why those?

They didn't, the Architect explained to her. Though some of their voices were uneasy, scratched, hoarse, slurring, stuttering, even cracking into silence, the words they used were spoken in tongues. Their words could be heard in any language, depending on who was listening.

The trouble, of course, he said, was that few who _could_ listen _did_.

***

When it comes to Archdemons, Mukarukan doesn't have the answers she wants. A non-Warden killed an Archdemon, it came back. A Warden killed an Archdemon, it didn't come back. A Warden who takes the death blow dies.

Where among this is the proof that the Chantry's explanation of souls is the truth? It rests on the idea that darkspawn have no souls, at least not unawakened. What is a soul? Is it having a spirit in the Fade? Something else? Have the Tranquil lost their souls?

Mukarukan is unsatisfied, and the Architect says it doesn't matter, as long as the mechanics work.

She scrunches her face in thought, trying to chart out the image the Architect offers to her. "I don't know," she says. "Do you _really_ think holding hands is all it'll take to kill Lusacan without casualties? Is it really that simple?"

"Have you known the Wardens and the darkspawn to join hands in mutual purpose before?" the Architect asks, a corner of his lip rising.

Mukarukan gives a nervous laugh. "No. Except for you and I and the mass Awakening."

"Precisely," the Architect says. "That succeeded, as I knew it would. We are tied with the Taint. When we tie our bodies, too, and our souls or our sentience, whatever you wish to call it, the deathblow will send Lusacan's soul through all of us. One dragon soul and one empty husk, a possession occurs. One dragon soul and one Warden soul, both are destroyed. A hundred Disciples and Wardens together, pushing against the dragon soul, it will be destroyed."

"Why not... one Warden and one Disciple versus the dragon? Two souls against one. Wouldn't that be enough?"

It all sounds a little like an absurd playing card game, matching points and bets.

"We cannot take chances. The more joined together, the more we will know no one will die."

"Sure," Mukarukan agrees. "It sounds logical enough. But we don't know that's what's going to happen."

"We are ready to try."

He may be ready. She doesn't feel ready. She doesn't want to move forward with this, she dreads it, like a cold acid sliding in her chest. He's experimenting, like mixing enchantments for the best combination. Except he's doing it with lives. But—

"Do you stand with me as you swore you would?" the Architect asks. "We cannot wait an eternity to act."

"Yes," Mukarukan says, finally. "All right."

***

Their group is still, with mostly the sound of shifting, breath, and murmuring. A sharlock darkspawn rocks forward and back with each breath, in a stance Mukarukan comes to realize is not readying for combat, but simply self-comfort. The sharlock's breath is still harsh and high by physiology but no shrill sound radiates. Ridged hands are large and stretching in the air as though pained, and a mouth is barely closed around teeth.

Mukarukan sets her mouth in a little line. “Are you injured?” she asks.

The way to Lusacan, with their conspicuous group of hundreds, Taint carriers and those without alike, is filled with small battles. Their marching alone vibrates the caverns, and sends all manner of beasts out to meet them in their path.

Their attackers are gravely outnumbered, of course, but after enough battles on the long walk, Mukarukan's army takes a moment to regroup, to tend to the wounded. Arishok raises his Qunari soldiers in a low chant of the Qun. Nathaniel rearranges and sorts the arrows in his quiver for the fourth time she's seen. Mukarukan sends some healing into her own feet—not injured, but sore.

They may have an advantage on Lusacan in that he still sleeps and will have no time to call armies to his command, but they still need to be as healthy as possible when they arrive. There cannot be a Sixth Blight, not from their attempts. Mukarukan will not be the cause of that.

In a croaking, uneasy voice, slipping into high-pitched unintelligibility in less careful moments, the sharlock Disciple says, “No open-ings, no blood to dir-ty the clean.”

Mukarukan gives a sad little smile. “I'm only asking because I don't want you to hurt. Can I heal you?”

The Disciple nods.

Mukarukan casts a healing spell, gentle to not knock the wind out of the pained on the way to recovery. But as the magic drains, mild, out of her, she sees the sharlock's eyes water and fill. Like a mirror, Mukarukan's chest feels tight, her eyes damp, and by the time Mukarukan is finished, she finds herself sobbing without meaning to, gasping gutted noises, as though something has been ripped up from inside her chest and has suddenly allowed her to cry. The darkspawn she has just healed is crying too. Darkspawn weep.

Mukarukan, through the blurred incoherency of her swollen, swimming eyes, gazes at the sharlock's pointed ears. Mukarukan pushes back her own hair to show the sharlock more clearly her own pointed ears. The sharlock sees. Mukarukan nods, holding one of the sharlock's clawed, arthritic hands in her own, as the darkspawn—the _elf_ —touches Mukarukan's ears in wonder. Wetness still runs down that Taint-blighted face.

“Better?” Mukarukan asks, voice almost a whisper so it does not betray her with an unbidden sob.

“No pain,” the darkspawn with the pointed ears says huskily.

These, too, are the People. Mukarukan's people.

Mukarukan drifts away from the gathered crowds, and grips her own face in one hand as if pressure can stop her from crying like it can stop a bleeding wound. She has not cried in a long time, and now it feels like she'll never stop.

She cries until her forehead, temples, eyes, and lungs ache. She cries until she can barely swallow from crying, barely breathe, throat heaving, and her mouth is dry and thirsty.

Mukarukan hears Zevran approach, though he's quiet. He kisses the knuckles of the hand clenched against her face, then when she lets it drop, grabs her damp fingers firmly. Mukarukan thinks about how he has never shied away from touching her even though he's still not Tainted. Mukarukan wipes under her eyes and her nose with the sleeve above her wrist armor, and leaves her other hand bare, splayed and offering, for the approaching footsteps she's grown to know well.

Nathaniel takes her offering, and grips her hand.

She bows her head, squeezing both of their hands back, standing between them.

“We have to succeed,” Mukarukan says.

***

When they approach the expansive wall behind where Lusacan sleeps, the contentedness and humming from the dragon's closeness stifled by Mukarukan's nerves, the Architect turns to her and says, "You will remain outside the chain. If anything goes wrong, at least one Warden witness to our efforts must remain."

Mukarukan stares at him. "Is this caution, or do you fear it won't work?"

"Caution alone."

She inspects his expression, then sighs and nods. "Very well."

For a brief moment, Mukarukan goes to Nathaniel, and sees he's heard the change of plans.

"I'm sorry," Mukarukan murmurs to him, biting her bottom lip and plucking at a twist of his sleeve under his armor. "I thought I'd be in the chain with you. _Vashedan_ , I'm like some rich general lounging while sending soldiers to war."

His large, firm hand against her lower back steadies her emotions. "It will be fine," Nathaniel says. "You're not in a lush palace, Mukarukan, you _are_ here in battle with us. I'm glad to see the Architect has some caution. Who knows how our heads will feel once the dragon's soul starts dying? You'll stay clear-headed and watch over us."

Clear-headed? Almost never, she thinks, her head a meandering fog, especially today. But Mukarukan will watch over them, that much is true.

"You will step aside from the chain?" Zevran says as he approaches and joins their hushed conversation. "Good. How else will you ensure I stay out of trouble? I could pilfer the dragon and run away if you were too preoccupied."

Mukarukan, Nathaniel, and Zevran wrap their arms around each other, the tangle of limbs an easy fit now, after some practice. Mukarukan closes her eyes, trying to ground herself in the press of their bodies. Nathaniel's taller, sturdier form, bigger and softer around the middle than Zevran, his arm muscles thicker than Zevran's. Zevran's slender strength, hard hipbones. She tries to seal to memory the way they smell, too, the plain soap and bow resin of Nathaniel's scent, the worn leather and fine oils of Zevran's, deep and faint.

There is hope for victory without losses today, something they never had with the Fifth Blight. But fear still flutters and cramps her stomach.

When Nathaniel goes to join hands with the others, Mukarukan lets Cokí lick her nose for good luck, then lets him go off too, as one by one the crowd of Disciples, Architect, and few Wardens fall silent to carefully join each in the other's grasp, or in Cokí's case, ears. Mukarukan stays with Zevran, Arishok, and the Qunari, nearer to the front. Some soldiers step forward at Arishok's nod, and lay down explosives along the wall, enough to take down the wall but not damage their people, not bring Lusacan too near death.

They wait. A glow comes from the chain of the Tainted, but when Mukarukan glances to see the root of the spell, it is already gone. All of them are positioned, holding hands, ready. The Architect nods at Arishok. Arishok nods at the Qunari.

The cavern wall shatters and collapses with in a painful burst of sound, crumbling to dust.

Then the dragon rears up, screaming.

Surprise is on their side, as is the cramped location. The Archdemon, no longer sleeping, is unable to burst clouds of fire down upon them for the damage it would cause to itself. Its best efforts are in trampling, so they try to double back, then charge forward again as much as they can, staying quick, never standing still.

Arishok, Zevran, Mukarukan, and the Qunari soldiers do carefully timed, precise bursts of damage to the dragon, wishing to bring it close to death, but not too close to accidentally snuff out its life. They keep the chain of Tainted behind them, guarded, for when it is their turn.

As Mukarukan weakens the dragon, ripples of white gold erupting around it as it sways, too large to be stunned but disoriented nonetheless, Zevran dives and maneuvers to slice and stab with minor but rapidly duplicating damage.

"Just like old times!" Zevran shouts with a laugh.

Not quite. It is strange to feel how her power has grown over time. Mukarukan knows all mages, herself included, better themselves with experience. But the theory is different than casting the same spells she once cast against Urthemiel, and seeing their heightened effect on Lusacan.

It is almost quick. The dragon stumbles down onto one twisted wing, and Mukarukan shouts, "Stop!" Her heart thumps in her throat.

Zevran and the Qunari pull back from flurry into order in an instant. They fall back with Mukarukan, as the Tainted, hands clutched, charge forward. Mukarukan sees that the Architect is the centerpoint of the link, with Nathaniel, a hand on Cokí's ear, to one side, Oghren and Velanna to the other. The Disciples link in grasp along either side. They move forward in a waving line that changes shape but never unlinks.

Mukarukan clutches her staff hard enough to leave marks of the tree limb's bark in her palm. From the gold of the Architect's empty eye sockets, two arcs of power form then join, swirling into a twisted purple flame, the expanding end of the spell reaching out like claws.

It latches to the dragon, who releases another excruciating shrill of pain and collapses fully now, still writhing, but its life force starting to drain away.

The deaths begin.

Like a sinking wave, one by one starting from each end of the chain of bodies, Mukarukan's allies start dropping to the ground.

They slump in a slow but steady beat, with no warning save the collapse of the body next to them to predict their own life snuffed. The pattern is clear, and heading center.

Through the whispers of the Taint, she feels each of them die.

"Let go!" Mukarukan screams. "Pull your hands away!"

One more Disciple on each end collapses. Shouts of confusion and alarm. The failed tugging away of still-joined hands.

"They cannot," the Architect says, his voice a sudden bellow of power. "I bound them and my spell will not break. We must finish what we started."

Two more bodies fall. Then two more.

Before she can attempt her own attack on the Architect, Arishok orders a soldier. The soldier charges the Architect, but drops dead before he arrives. Another tries, with the same result. A third, dead, and Arishok yells, " _Parshaara_!" in time with Mukarukan's shout of "It's not working!"

The dragon cries in pain once more, growing weaker.

"Do not attempt to stop this," the Architect says, his curse still flying into the dying dragon.

Mukarukan reaches in her mind, eyes rolling back, desperate to grasp onto the knots of the binding, but her magic fumbles in her mind. He's too powerful.

Death.

"Why are you doing this?" she screams so loud lights swim before her eyes. "You're going to kill all of them! You're going to die too!"

"And Lusacan with us!"

Death.

This never had to happen. Just one Tainted, one death, is enough to kill the dragon. Is he possessed? Is it the Calling? Is it the Taint, a mind suddenly warped, rotting too far?

"You can kill it yourself if you want to die!" Mukarukan shouts, throat stinging with her pitch. "Let them go! _You can kill Lusacan without killing them!_ "

"It is too late," the Architect says, as more drop to the ground, and the dragon begins gasping weakly. "I will finish this. There is but one alternative. Will you choose it?"

A darkspawn who was once a Qunari, a darkspawn who was once a dwarf, die on either side.

The deaths march nearer to the center. Toward where Cokí, Velanna, and Oghren still stand. Toward Nathaniel. Sooner than that, it will reach the shrieks—sharlocks—the darkspawn who were elves—who are still elves.

Lusacan is close to death. She has no time.

No time for mournful goodbyes, or for anyone, probably Zevran, to beg Mukarukan not to do what she must. No time for grand speeches, or last kisses. No time for anyone to cry.

It is Arishok who catches Mukarukan's eyes as she charges. He knows. He knows that she has never had a clearer purpose than in this moment. She knows he among all of them would not stop her, even if he could.

She swore she would never do this to Zevran, but there is no time left.

Mukarukan makes a choice.

She summons up all her power from the well inside her yet not, in her chest, her stomach, yet really in the Fade, the Beyond. She sends a shard of pure force magic from her staff barreling through the dying dragon's skull. She sees only for the briefest of instants that it works, that she has co-opted the death, that the rest of the chain stops falling.

Then she is three.

And something is wrong, because she is _three_ , her and the dragon are not alone.

Lusacan is crying to her against her soul, terrified, warning her, dying, thanking her for freedom, suffering all at once. Lusacan tries to... he tries to shield her.

What has she done?

She is two.

And there is a magister in her head.

Pain snaps through Mukarukan, like every bone is cracking, nerves alight with twisting and writhing, so far beyond cries, beyond anything she could vocalize, the suffering so great its screams turn inside out to silence.

Pure, terrible silence, white and empty, and every piece of Mukarukan feels pulled apart.

Then a terrible rush of power clamps down on her, like her death has been corked, stoppered. She is trying to drown to end the agony, ripped by the sea, but she is only swallowing the water and growing stronger again and—

She blinks.

***

Alistair's teeth are bright, bright white.

“Ru,” Alistair says, “I've been waiting for you. I told you I'd love you forever.” He blushes. “I meant it.”

Mukarukan laughs in his face.

It's a bitter laugh, of course, and her chest aches.

“Where's Zevran?” she says.

“I—what?” Alistair grins and runs a hand through his hair, shrugging up one shoulder, looking shy. “Not here, I guess. No clue, but forget about that for a moment. Aren't you happy to see me?”

Oh, cute, there's a little rose garden next to Alistair, all blossoming. By Andraste's holy fucking...

“Where's Zevran,” Mukarukan repeats, her voice a warning not a question, “And where's Nathaniel.”

His eyes, pools of bright innocence, widen. “No use thinking about that. I know I was your first love. And now that you're here, Maker's breath, you're still so beautiful. We can be happy now. No duty to tear us—“

“Alistair wasn't my first love,” she interrupts, swatting with her hand. “And happy's not in a list of the first ten words I'd use to describe how he made me feel. You didn't do your research, demon, and you're not Alistair.”

“Mmm, a pity,” the desire demon moans, breathy, in its own voice now, then with a flash of white light, it's floating in front of Mukarukan, hips inching from side to fluid side, tracing a talon between its own legs, a hand cupping its own perking breast. The rose garden disappears.

“I know your body appreciates this form, hmm?” The desire demon pouts. “But I'd hoped I could have a little fun with your heart first. Didn't you _want_ that big, sad boy?”

It sucks on its clawed finger, swaying, a slow gyration. Mukarukan ignores it.

“I don't make deals with demons," Mukarukan says, rolling her eyes. "I don't know when any of you will ever learn. It's not getting easier for you to tempt me, but you all just want to keep _trying_.”

“I'm just a visitor here too, you know,” the demon says, one overlaid layer of its voice creeping into audibility for Mukarukan, reminding her of fingernails shrieking against the stone floor of the Circle tower, the smothering smell of aerosolized lyrium, some mage too young to be casting burning from the inside out. It slides one set of knifetip fingernails between its shining thighs, lolling its head to the side, drifting a little closer. “All I want is to _play_.”

Before Mukarukan can finish raising her staff, another voice surges from just out of the side of Mukarukan's vision. The voice is wizened and scratchy, but firm nonetheless.

“ _Na vir_ ,34 demon! _Din tu har'el!_ 35 You cannot have this one.”

The voice belongs to an old elvhen man who, having finished his rant against the demon, flashes a smile of his craggy, wrinkled-covered face in Mukarukan's direction.

The desire demon bares its teeth and hisses, the sound magnified by power and the Fade, and rushing against Mukarukan's ears like a storm wind.

***

In hardly enough time for Zevran to even realize what is happening, Mukarukan's staff has clattered with an anticlimactic tap to the rubbled ground. She slumps down to her knees, then face first to the ground. The dragon's cries fall silent. Everything is silent.

“No,” Zevran says, running to her. He drops to his knees too, not caring enough to stop his hands from shaking. " _No_." He turns Mukarukan over, clutches at her face. Chain broken, Velanna runs forward, bursting out healing magics.

Mukarukan's body jerks from the force of Velanna's spell, and lands unmoving again. Velanna kneels, closes her eyes, touches Mukarukan's head, then looks up at Zevran. He sees strands of Velanna's pale hair scratch at the water of her eyes until she pushes them away.

"What?" Zevran says, knowing the answer, not knowing how to keep breathing. His voice turns to a shout. "Why do you look at me like that?"

“She's dead,” Velanna says.

“No,” Zevran says, and grips a hand against the back of Mukarukan's lolling, heavy head. She survived the last Archdemon. She lived, and let him ever closer, gave him a new lover to share with her, even freed him from the Crows. She would not do this now. Her scalp is still _hot_ , dead women are not—

“No," Zevran repeats. "She—she can't be so cruel—she—”

Zevran lays Mukarukan's head gently back against the ground, stands, then draws his knives.

Zevran charges and cuts the Architect across the mouth, deep, splitting that grotesque flesh.

"You did this!" Zevran spits in the Architect's face. " _Maldita sea la concha que te parió!_ " The cold observation on the darkspawn's face enrages Zevran even more. He presses both knives against either side of the Architect's neck, where his veins still throb though he should have died long ago. "You only kill those who cannot move, hmm? Are you going to fight? You killed her, do you not want to kill me, too?" Zevran twists the knives enough to break skin. "Kill me! _Me cago en el diablo que t'aguanta!_ _Kill_ me!"

"Zevran—" Nathaniel says from behind him, and Zevran feels a touch to his shoulder.

Zevran throws off Nathaniel's hand with a sharp jerk. "Leave me be," he hisses, then turns back to the Architect. "You say nothing, _cucharada de mierda_?"

"I am sorry," the Architect says, his voice low. "The Old God's influence was strong. My mind was corrupted, not its own. I did not wish for this."

Zevran pulls his daggers away, steps back and laughs, loud, and without any joy. "Well, if that is true, then you do not really wish your people to die, _verdad_? So will you mind terribly if I do this?"

Zevran goes to the nearest still-standing Disciple. As it looks up, before it can say a word, Zevran slices open its throat.

The silence goes into an uproar, and all the better, for Zevran cannot stand this quiet. Nathaniel is on him in an instant, disarming him and throwing his daggers aside, holding him back even as Zevran struggles. Velanna tries to heal the throat wound but Zevran knows she cannot. It was dead in one slice. He was a Crow, after all. Arishok and Oghren hold back other darkspawn from swarming Zevran.

"Let them come!" Zevran shouts, struggling against Nathaniel's grasp. "If they want to kill me, give them the chance!"

"Zevran," Nathaniel rasps, gripping him tighter and tugging him back.

"Let me go," Zevran warns to Nathaniel.

"I will not," Nathaniel retorts.

"If these beasts will not do it," Zevran hisses, "if they will not kill me, I will do it myself." He is feeling particularly ambitious today. Why should he merely seek an enemy, if they will not act? He can do the deed just as well.

"Zevran," Nathaniel says again, not letting him out of his hold.

Zevran frees an arm and sends his elbow into Nathaniel's stomach.

"Zevran!" Nathaniel gasps, bending slightly, but only tightens his grip, reclaims Zevran's escaped arm.

As if all the air has escaped from his body, Zevran sinks to the ground in Nathaniel's hold. His rage breaks into grief, until he is choking with it, gasping.

Cokí is perched over Mukarukan's chest, as if protective, and barks and barks, dissolving into howls.

***

When the desire demon collapses with a scream and moan, Mukarukan whirls on the old man next, her staff ready.

With great care, like his body is fragile despite the ease of his battle not moments ago, he sets his staff, a Keeper's staff, down on the warping ground. He raises both his palms to her, his fingers curled with age. “ _An'daran atish'an, da'len_ ,”36 he says. “I have no wish to attack you. I know who you are.” His skin is brown, his eyes drooped and crinkled kindly, Dalish tattoos she has never seen renditions of before across his face.

In usual circumstances, Mukarukan would be deferential and affectionate to one such as he.

These are not usual circumstances.

Mukarukan squints her eyes at him in a suspicious glare, and when he makes no move to hurt her, glances around. “Why aren't I dead? How did I get sent to this part of the Fade?”

“The Beyond,” he corrects gently, and while she feels a little spark of shame, she relaxes considerably, too.

“The Beyond,” she agrees. “Thank you for the reminder, _ha'hren_."

There is a door, glowing, black, and deep, but he stands in front of it.

"Magisters have trapped you, my child," the Keeper says. "I will show you."

He shows her a vision of herself, and Lusacan, in the moments of undeath, and dying.

Then he shows her the Denerim Alienage.

Its streets dissolve like fine sand through a grate, its gates locking shut. Ancient drains open beneath feet. The bare feet of elves. Shianni. Children she teaches. An old woman selling her wares. Others, so many others, all elves. A pulse. A too-bright, swirling light. All the elves fall to the ground like a suction of air has tugged them. And then the blood flows, streaming from their noses, their eyes, their pointed ears. The blood pours down to the drains.

"Is this real?" she gasps. "Tell me!"

"It is real, _da'len_ ," the Keeper says, and the vision ends. Tears slip out his eyes. "What you see is called a Magrallen. It has provided the power to trap you here."

"I caused this?" Mukarukan says, feeling like she's choking. It might not be real, it might not be real, it—

"No," he says. "Humans caused this."

His lack of blame terrifies her more. The vision is real. She knows it is.

"But—I—" Her teeth chatter. With effort she could control them, here in the Beyond, she could control her environment if she tried, anything she wished, but she doesn't have the strength.

"There may be a way to stop this massacre," the Keeper says.

***

Orzammar is already a center of chill in Ferelden, its streets so underground. In a freezing basement cellar belonging to Felsi, the dwarf who bore Oghren's child, Nathaniel and Oghren lay Mukarukan's body along the floor. Her flesh has not yet started its process back to soil. Velanna cleaned the body and wrapped it in new linens. Said prayers for Mukarukan in her Elvish tongue.

Nathaniel watches as Oghren cries wildly now, unashamedly. Oghren's child runs to wipe the tears from face and beard with a tiny flat hand, and whispers, "Sorry, sad Momma," over and over, until Felsi pulls the boy back upstairs.

Zevran refuses to touch Mukarukan now, or be near her body. He has been silent and drinking upstairs. Cokí they lock in Felsi's room, for the mabari is unable to cease howling when he is near Mukarukan, and it scares the child. Nathaniel goes to the room several times to give Cokí comfort, sitting and petting him a few minutes at a time.

Arishok, ducking uncomfortably in the dwarven architecture, pays his attention and honor not to Mukarukan's body, but to her mage's staff, bowing his head over it. "I will grant it to _taarbas_ to deliver to Par Vollen," Arishok murmurs.

"What will be done with it?" Nathaniel asks. He knows Mukarukan would be willing to part with it for Arishok, but Nathaniel is still ignorant of Qunari customs. "Is the significance a memento, or something other?"

Arishok considers him, then says, "For my _kadan_ 's _kadan_ , I will say a little. She was _Basalit-an_. She was not of the Qun, so her life's tool will not be kept as her soul, but it will be kept in our storehouse. It will be drained of magic and repurposed as _tamassrans_ choose, but will bear a name in memory of her journey."

Grief presses, heavy, on Nathaniel's chest. "I believe she would have liked that," Nathaniel says, voice rough, and allows Arishok to take the twisted wood.

Once all who can arrive before a smell descends pay their regards, they will burn her body. He regrets that Delilah will have no chance to see her first. Antiva is too far.

Nathaniel kneels before the wrappings that hold the woman who saved his life.

A throat-clearing noise from the stairs makes Nathaniel lift his head.

“Hello,” says an old human man in long mage robes. “I let myself in, for I'm afraid this is rather urgent."

Nathaniel stands. "Can I assist you?"

"I am First Enchanter Irving of the Ferelden Circle of Magi," the old man says. "I journeyed here as soon as I could. I'm here to—"

"Of course," Nathaniel says. "To say goodbye to her. I know she was of the Circle."

"No," Irving corrects. "Let me finish please, lad. I'm here to let you know that Mukarukan Surana is not, in fact, dead."

***

If the Keeper is a demon, Mukarukan thinks, he will offer her escape, or the easy salvation of the Alienage. He will deliver her out of the Fade himself, for a price. He will stop the elves from draining. And she will refuse, and he will grow angry, and he will try to kill her, and she will kill him, and then she will think of a plan.

She has no need for bargaining with demons.

Instead, he says, "I cannot help you escape from here, I have no such power. But I can tell you that your friends care for you, and seek a way to help you."

More relief sweeps over her at his inability to help.

As the relief comes in, a small part of Mukarukan that was filled with longing, an empty place in her where her elders and ancestors are missing, feels a little less gaping with a Keeper here.

"Not that I'm complaining," she says. "But why didn't I die?"

***

Nathaniel brings Mukarukan's friends back to the cellar to meet Irving.

All but Arishok, for Irving pressed a hand on Nathaniel's shoulder and said, "I saw the Qunari leaving. Bring the rest, but do not send for him to return. What I speak of will only unsettle him. It is in regards to magic."

Nathaniel agreed to the condition. He can always inform Arishok after the meeting.

 

"She looked pretty fuckin' dead to me,” Oghren says, as unwilling to accept false hope as Nathaniel.

Irving holds up a small, plain gold circle, within which two vials form the shape of an hourglass. The artifact is filled with a deep red, near black substance.

"Mukarukan Surana's phylactery," Irving says. "Objects like these can track, but they also tell of life force, both body and spirit, to those who know how to read them. A strange series of events occurred at the moment of her bodily death. The new readings of the phylactery were one of them."

“How could you perceive the moment she died?” Nathaniel says, wary. “Are phylacteries not kept away from the Circle?”

Irving gives a sad smile that near looks like shame. “There are exceptions. I keep hers with me at my desk. I have ever since she was recruited by the Wardens. I keep it, in case of... anything. I must have first access to it, not Templars. It reacted. I knew at once.”

“Templars? Is the Circle not freed?” Nathaniel asks.

“Freedom is complicated,” Irving says. "Particularly after Kirkwall."

"Cease dancing around the topic, and get to your point!" Zevran snaps. He smells of alcohol, even from a greater distance than Nathaniel would prefer him to be.

"Fair enough," Irving says, and looks sympathetically at Zevran. The Enchanter has likely heard of Mukarukan's favored and loyal Antivan assassin. Zevran is in the mythology of Mukarukan's legend now. Nathaniel is certain this exposes Zevran more than he wishes to be.

“On my way from the tower here," Irving continues, "I discovered reports of the Denerim Alienage, sealed near simultaneous to the time I marked Mukarukan's death.”

"Shianni," Velanna breathes out, and swears a stream of Elvish, her fists tightening. She heads for the stairs at once.

"My further information may be of great value to you," Irving says.

"Please, Velanna," Nathaniel says. "Hear him out, then I'll go with you to assist."

"The last time they did this to the Alienage, it was your father, _shem'len_ ," Velanna says to Nathaniel, her eyes flashing.

"I'm fairly certain it is not my father this time," Nathaniel responds. "Let us hope it is someone who wishes less harm than he did."

"I doubt it," she says. She leaves up the stairs.

"If you are Dalish you will wish to hear this," Irving says, and Velanna pauses for a moment, then keeps ascending steps.

"Mukarukan has entered _uthenera_!" Irving shouts after her, not bothering to turn around to look at her.

Nathaniel does not know the significance, but Velanna comes back down the stairs, and grabs a handful of Irving's robes with her hand. "Are you lying, _shem_?"

"Do you mean to say," Zevran begins, then stops. "That is... my Elvish is a little rusty. You are saying Mukarukan has become... immortal?"

***

"I do not know, _da'len_ ," the Keeper says. "All I know is that a new cycle of our people's lives has begun. You sleep the endless dream."

***

Irving's previous attempts to access Mukarukan's spirit in the Fade with lyrium and other mages have proven impossible, he explains. There is a block. He knows little more than this barricade is not elvhen magic. There is a more pressing problem than speaking with her, however.

"She's not Perfect," Velanna says, gruff.

"What?" Nathaniel asks, stumped for her meaning. "Is that an arbitrary observation, or—?"

"Shut it, _shem_ , do you know nothing of elves, even after fucking two of us?"

Nathaniel's eyes, on reflex, jump to Zevran. Zevran does not look at him.

Velanna growls a noise, and begins pacing. "My ancestors could reach Perfection. It means they knew how to keep their bodies safe while their spirits traveled the Beyond. _She_ ," Velanna says, and gestures to Mukarukan's body, wrapped in the linens, "won't be able to do it. Unless we preserve her body, she'll be as good as dead, even if we take down this block and she tries to come back. If she's really in _uthenera_... we'll need to do it soon. If she travels deeper, past the outskirts near the Veil, we won't be able to tie her spirit to her body. It'll be nothing but a corpse."

Nathaniel remembers how he only began to realize Mukarukan was gone when he emptied her pack to sort through. He found a mound of decay, mixed with rock-sharp dried crumbs, scattered along the bottom. It once belonged to a certain prized piece of cake found by her hound, her preservation spell broken. Nathaniel set the mess outside, to rejoin the earth.

But Mukarukan is not a slobbered-on pastry. "How difficult is the preservation?" he asks.

But before Irving or Velanna answers, Nathaniel feels a darkspawn through the Taint.

"Very," the voice of the Architect says from the stairs.

***

"Your friends discuss a way to help you, and for that I am glad. The life of an elf is lonely, but all of them care. The elves, Qunari, dwarf. Even the human."

"Yes," Mukarukan says. "They're more loyal than I could have wished for." She gives a little smile. "My puppy too."

His face looks, for the first time, a little less kind toward her. Only a little. "I am not fond of hounds," the Keeper says.

"Oh," she says, feeling a little nervous stir in her belly once more, though she cannot pinpoint precisely why.

"They come from Tevinter, the place that took our people's hope away," he says, eyes mournful. "The dogs have no fault in that, yet they are a reminder of pain."

Mukarukan's fears ease again. "I'm sorry. They abandoned that place soon enough, though."

"That is good," he says. "Enough about hounds. You have only a little time to make a choice. Behind me, through this doorway," he explains, and gestures to the gate that seems to be growing a little paler, "are the places beyond the Beyond. Your elders travel there in peace and contentment. You may go through and seek them."

"Will I be able to come back?" she asks.

"No," the Keeper says.

***

Zevran does not try to attack the Architect this time. Nathaniel is sure it is because the stakes have changed.

"The consequences of her preservation will be more extreme than Velanna implies," the Architect says. "Preserving a corpse, and preserving a corpse to be usable in mind and body... these are different. It is difficult, powerful, and the magic is forbidden, both by your people," he nods to Irving, "and yours." He nods to Velanna.

"This much is true," Irving agrees. "Still, the Circle keeps an excellent library, and being First Enchanter does have its perks." He pulls out a scroll from a pocket of his robes. "The ritual, in its completeness."

"If this ritual thingy is so boogley-oogley and strong," Oghren says, "then how the hell are you planning to charge it up? Should we pop on down to the lyrium mines and—"

"Lyrium will not suffice," the Architect says.

"No, it will not," Irving agrees cheerfully. "You will kill me and use me as blood mana."

***

"Your body will fall away to dust if you travel through the gateway," the Keeper says. "But you have done much, Mukarukan. You have struggled long and hard. Perhaps another hero will rise instead, to take your place."

It reminds Mukarukan too much of Sloth demon ways, and so she is glad when he does not convince her further to be done, does not ask for a choice yet.

"Your friends seek to save your body, however," the Keeper continues. "All you need do is wait, outside the gateway, and they will join your spirit with your flesh. Your friends are loyal, as you said, and you are strong. You can seek a way to free the locked door, then free the Alienage. With your immortality, you can help our people. Perhaps even reverse the quickening of other elves."

It reminds Mukarukan too much of Pride demon ways, and so she is glad when he adds, "But the gate to your ancestors will be closed to you if you wait. You will need to remain here, in the in betweens of the Fade, without the help of rest or comfort, without the companionship of all of us, while you and your friends find a way to unlock your door to them."

"The choice is yours," the Keeper says.

***

All stand in shocked silence, until Nathaniel speaks first. "You, a First Enchanter of Ferelden, wish to willingly die for a blood ritual?"

If there was one thing Mukarukan always hated, it was blood magic.

Irving smiles, his wrinkles looking ever more sunken. "I am old. This blood of hers," and he holds the phylactery up as if to stare through the blood to the other side. "It was pulled from her when she had just left infancy, barely able to walk steady without toppling." Irving's face shifts and he ceases smiling. "I was her instructor, her guardian, and the only parent she knew when her memories of her past began fading. And in her time with us, until the Wardens took her away, I failed her."

"What do you—" Nathaniel begins.

"As I said, I am old," Irving cuts him off. "And I owe her this much."

"I will conduct the ritual, if all are willing," the Architect says. "For I too have failed her."

"Oh no, you won't be doing that," Velanna says. "I wouldn't trust you with the blood mana of a bee. If we're going to do it, I'll perform it."

"Very well, I will only assist. If the others—"

"Do what needs to be done," Zevran says at once.

"I don't know," Oghren says. "The Commander didn't like this shit. But if there's no other way..."

They all look to Nathaniel. He sees why Irving wished the Arishok to be far away for this conversation. Nathaniel imagines Arishok would prefer to kill them all than allow this.

"Nathaniel," Zevran says, not looking in his eyes. "I will do this with your assent, or without. I will not lose her. It is better if you do not force me to make a choice."

If Irving is willing. If Mukarukan can come back.

"Yes," Nathaniel says.

"Let's begin," Irving says. "We don't have much time."

***

"My friends, will they conduct a ritual?"

"Yes," the Keeper says. "Though you can stop them before they begin. Your old instructor is there, with your phylactery."

"Irving?"

"You must choose soon," her elder says.

"What kind of ritual?" Mukarukan demands.

"Blood," he says. "Irving gives freely of his aging body to save you. Not many humans would speed their deaths for an elf. But blood magic is treacherous, yes. I know you are careful, as you should be. You can stop it. If you go through the doorway, they will know you have moved on. They will not begin the ritual, and then you will have nothing to fear."

"I—" she tries, her head spinning.

"The choice is yours, but not for longer, _da'len_ , take care. The doorway to peace will close any moment. Go through, if you wish to stop this, if you wish to be with your family. Your ancestors await you in joy."

But Mukarukan can't have peace. Not when her people are suffering. And those are her family, out there. Even the Alienage elves she's never met.

A blood ritual. But Irving assents. And without assent, the Alienage is being drained, because of her.

Mukarukan's people have hurt for so long, trampled on, destroyed.

A blood ritual. But—

She needs to give her people what she has. They need her to save them.

Mukarukan shakes her head. "I will wait for the spell."

“I will wait with you, then," the Keeper says, nodding, solemn.

"But the doorway?"

"Do not fear for me, I may travel as I wish. This is your doorway that will close, not mine. I entered _uthenera_ long before you."

"You really will?" Mukarukan asks him, wanting to hear it again, suddenly feeling very small. "You'll wait with me?"

"I do not abandon one of my kin, _lethal'lan_." 37

The Keeper wraps his arms around her, and Mukarukan closes her eyes.

***

"I'm ready. Let's see why this _shem_ -lover got _uthenera_ before anyone else," Velanna says, wry, after reading the scroll Irving provides.

"Go on, then," Zevran says. He does not wish to wait any longer. He does not care to have the group agonize over the morality again. Zevran simply does not care. And if the old man wishes to die, all the better.

Irving checks the trinket holding Mukarukan's blood one last time, and then Velanna begins, the Architect at her side.

The ritual is quicker than Zevran expected, done almost at once.

Irving is dead. Velanna is wracked with chills and a frown, and twists her Dalish First's ring on her finger around and around. From upstairs, Zevran can hear Cokí howling.

The linens around Mukarukan begin to rise and fall with breath, and Zevran strips the cloth away from her face. She still will not wake, but she breathes. Now there is a task ahead, and Zevran will do it. They will bring her back.

Zevran takes away one of her necklaces, a fine thin strand of gold that once held a healing charge, long gone. He gently undoes his earring from his Warden's still cold lobe, and kisses the hole it has left, before turning away from her.

He picks up her phylactery from the ground where it lies abandoned, and strings it onto the necklace. Zevran places it around his neck, then tucks it under his shirt.

He goes to Nathaniel, and cannot look at him, only unclenches Nathaniel's hand, which trembles a little, shaken from the choices they have made. Zevran places the earring in his palm, and closes those large, fine archer's fingers around it.

"Wear it if you wish," Zevran mutters. "For now."

"Zevran," Nathaniel says, low, and his voice is thick and hoarse. Nathaniel, at the edges of Zevran's vision, intends to either embrace or kiss him, leaning ever closer.

Zevran shakes his head, though turning someone away often feels more frightening than a plunge into battle. "No."

Nathaniel stays still. "I understand." His voice honors Zevran, is not even petulant, but Zevran hears the resignation, too.

"No, you do not understand," Zevran mumbles. "I meant not now. But later, if you still wish. I would not want to be done with you yet."

"I am yours," Nathaniel says.

"That is my line you have stolen," Zevran says blithely, and something in his chest lightens. "Now, Denerim. And after that, well. We will go find our Warden."

***

Once, long ago, in a life that felt more real, Sten told Mukarukan, "Knowledge is one half of wisdom. But there are many things that can only be known too late."

When the portal to _uthenera_ closes, the door to her world still barred, the kind old man _changes_.

The Keeper's chest sinks in, and his body collapses inside out, until he is nothing but a drift of hollow ash and lost language on the wind.

Mukarukan is wiser, but it is too late.

The empty air, in its entropy, skids and flits in all directions, as if deciding. Then the unformed takes shape.

Sten once told her she was a wildfire, and to take care, for she could consume herself as much as others.

Mukarukan hasn't seen her demon's face since the Harrowing.

With a wolf's jaw and teeth full of seeping holes, tiny crevasses that scream in Mukarukan's head she will never be able to seek anything within them, never be able to survive falling into them, never be able to feel pleasure or the absence of pain when they coat and peel apart her skin, so she is just filled with holes—

Free in the realm of those she loves, Mouse smiles and dives into the Architect's mouth.

***

_That night, everyone dreams of storms._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  33 "The Boss" ("Antivan"/Spanish)   
>    
>  34 “Leave!” (Elvish)    
>    
>  35 “You are not feared any longer!” (Elvish)   
>    
>  36 A caring greeting from an elder to a younger elf; literally "Enter this place in peace, little child" (Elvish)   
>    
>  37 kinswoman (Elvish)
> 
>  
> 
>   
> [Mukarukan's Nightmare](http://quequieresmrmorden.tumblr.com/post/79439805740/true-tests-never-end-mukarukans-nightmare-by) by [quequieresmrmorden](http://quequieresmrmorden.tumblr.com/)  
> 

**Author's Note:**

> Cliffhanger! Does it make it better that I've already started drafting the sequel, and I already know the upcoming plot? All will be explained.
> 
>  **NOTES ON LANGUAGES:**
> 
>   * Qunlat language resources and translations from the [Dragon Age Wiki](http://dragonage.wikia.com/)
>   * Elvhen language resources and translations from [Katie's Best-Guess-At-Elvhen-Dictionary](http://archiveofourown.org/works/359253/) and the [Dragon Age Wiki](http://dragonage.wikia.com/)
>   * Antivan (Spanish) is from my actually Latin@ boricua brain, plus a little bit of Googling. The Antivan characters in this fic tend to have regional language quirks from both Spain and Borikén (Puerto Rico). 
>   * The latter is because I'm a boricua, and because I think it's absurd that Antiva stands in for _~Latin America~_ in the _Dragon Age_ universe, when it's essentially just Spain, which is a white colonizer country, though with exceptions such as its North African components. (The Qunari in the DA universe, as is confirmed if you flip a map of Thedas upside down.)
>   * Given this, and the Dalish-are-Indigenous allegory, I chose to headcanon Zevran, Mukarukan, and other Dalish-Antivan characters as Indigenous boricuas, specifically Borikén Taínos, as I am. There are a few scattered uses of Taíno language in the fic, too, such as the big hulking mabari with the [teeny tiny frog name](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coqu%C3%AD). Presumably, then, Dalish elves in their decolonizing efforts are a gathering of pan-Indigenous peoples of many different cultures and languages.
>   * These choices are based on my specific experiences, and are still insufficient to represent Latin@s.
>   * Also, all of these fantasy genre allegories can be super problematic for a variety of reasons.
> 

> 
> **ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:**
> 
>   * The glorious, gorgeous cover art embedded in the first chapter's opening notes was created by [covenmouse](http://covenmouse.tumblr.com/post/86018257634/hurricane-and-the-thieves-by-quequieresmrmorden) as part of the Big Bang. Thank you so much, covenmouse, for choosing my fic. I'm thrilled to have your art accompany my story.
>   * [trollny-stark](http://trollny-stark.tumblr.com/) listened to me rant and ponder about this story for many months at a time, and was an awesome editor/beta for my most incoherent first drafts. The evolution of this fic from me fucking around with stream-of-consciousness vignettes to AN ACTUAL PLOT WOAH with structure and twists and CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT WOAH is owed in a huge amount to trollny's encouragement, patience, and input while listening to me agonize about a fandom that _she's not even in_.
>   * [heyheyheytheendisnear](http://heyheyheytheendisnear.tumblr.com/), queerplatonic partner extraordinaire, introduced me to BioWare games, predicted my Zevran feels, sparked this fic's _uthenera_ idea, helped with edits and characterization, giggled with me about choosing sex positions for the steamier scenes, and reminded me to read the codex.
>   * [maybethings](http://maybethings.tumblr.com/) has a great Tumblr filled with Qun love that made me happy while writing Qunari-related parts of this fic.
>   * Last but not least, thank you thank you thank you to [chileancarmenere](http://chileancarmenere.tumblr.com/) for astonishingly helpful characterization and universe suggestions, and beta reading despite me sending over my fic within mere days of the challenge deadline. chileancarmenere was also a writer in the challenge, and wrote a simultaneously serious and hilarious crime-solving detective AU fic, ["Revolvers and Lyrium,"](http://chileancarmenere.tumblr.com/post/85924402694/revolvers-and-lyrium) that I strongly recommend to anyone who loves Isabela, Aveline, or better yet, both.
> 

> 
> As a final, unrelated thought, I will eat my shoe if Nathaniel Howe is not actually a person of color, and I don't like eating shoes, so... he is. No, but really. He is.
> 
>  **Thank you so much for reading this fic!** Feel free to leave a comment, concern, question, constructive critique, whatever you'd like. I'll make sure to reply. You can also find me on my Tumblr, [quequieresmrmorden](http://quequieresmrmorden.tumblr.com).


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